FEMME VITALE

Invited to produce a work on a Porsche brake disc, as part of an exceptional collaboration between Galerie Sakura and the famous sports car company Porsche, Hélène Planquelle interrogates the metaphorical signifiers of the brand, and through it, of the sports car industry as a whole, drawing on symbolism, archetypal narratives and recent advances in evolutionary psychology and mate strategy. 
Playing on the time-honored expression "femme fatale", the artist suggests that the production of ostentatious consumer goods such as sports cars, a symbol of power and social status, finds its underlying psychological and biological motivation in man's love and desire for woman, the embodiment of nature as the source of life, symbolized here by a shimmering flower floating in an aquatic-looking medium. Through the confrontation between the cold hardness of steel and the liquid delicacy of an iris painted in a block of epoxy resin, this work depicts the endless meeting and dance of the feminine and the masculine in the game of love.