BIO
Rare are the people who go through life without experiencing the rapture of love and the sorrow of having the person you care most about hurt you in the most unbearable way. Hélène Planquelle has made this beautifully painful experience, private yet so universal, the foundation of her art practice, which comes from a need to confront the torment of our relationship to the Other.
She explores this delicate balance between bliss and misery in our encounters with others from an intimate as well as more universal point of view, tackling recurrent topics like emotional dependence, attachment, social need, vulnerability, acceptance and rejection, power and violence.
Conceptual in nature, her work draws on a wide range of philosophical and scholarly references, from ethics to cognitive sciences, attachment theories and evolutionist psychology. The figures of victim and torturer originally ingrained in our encounter with the other bring her to explore extreme physical activities like sadomasochist practices or combat sports as graphic sources of inspiration.
Imbued with a deliberate dramatic quality, Hélène Planquelle's work ultimately looks to sublimate the raw nature of the experiences she touches on to help us make sense of our most individual sorrows she embeds in a broader story, that of humankind.
Self-taught artist Hélène Planquelle owes her wide range of knowledge and interests to her humanity studies. After pursuing her passion for classical literature and philosophy, she went on to study intercultural communication and opened her mind to always more contemporary topics in the realms of social and natural sciences.
Fierce advocate of figuration, her work draws on man's ancestral need for storytelling. As art is not so much about finding answers than raising questions, Hélène Planquelle's work deliberately looks for ambiguity, uncertainty and multiple meaning.
CV
Solo shows
2021
Spotlight showcase, Arch Enemy Arts, (Philadelphia, USA), March
Atelier Desnouettes (Paris, FR), February
Superfine Art Fair, LA efair, February
2019
Where is your brother, YIA (Young International Artist Fair), booth #5, October 31-November 3
Original Violence, We Art From Paris (Paris,FR), March-April
2018
Galerie Joan Font (Paris, FR), March
2017
Zamaken Collective (Paris,FR), November
Place des Cordes (Paris,FR), November
Group shows
2020
Destructuralisme Figuratif, Parc Floral de Vincennes (Paris, FR), October
Paratissima Art Fair, Magazzini Romagnoli (Bologna, IT), January
2019
Grateful Park, Pilotenkueche International Art Program (Leipzig, DE), August
Hungry Dungeon Friends, Kunstkraftwerk (Leipzig, DE), July
Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Seattle Center Exhibition hall (Seattle, US), April
Féminin/Masculin, l'art se joue du genre, Lestudio Gallery (Paris, FR), March-April
La caresse et le meurtre hésitent dans leurs mains, La Condamine (Paris,FR), February, (as a curator and artist)
2018
Rapports, Les Rituelles (Paris,FR), June-September
1480km, Galerie La Lalande (Paris,FR), May
De l’ordre de l’intime, Galerie La Lalande (Paris,FR), March
2017
Ropes U, Eurydice Gallery (NY, US), August-September,
Residencies
NPE Art Residency, (Singapore), April-June 2021
Powerlong residency, (Hangzhou, China), 2021
59 Rivoli, (Paris, France), November 2019-February 2020
Pilotenkueche International Art Program, (Leipzig, Germany) July-September 2019