Intent
Aurélien Potier
25.04.25 - 25.05.25Click here to access the list of works
Intent is the first solo exhibition by French artist Aurélien Potier in the UK. This exhibition inaugurates NıCOLETTı², a programme of solo shows and experimental projects taking place in our second exhibition room.
Spanning sculpture, writing, performance, sound, and drawing, Aurélien Potier’s practice navigates spaces where contradictory forces intersect, materially articulating tensions between tenderness and violence, asperity and grace, reason and instinct.
In Intent, these dualities are expressed through a series of sculptures composed of sanded and twisted spikes that form intricate knots. While their sharp edges convey feelings of threat and hostility, their rusted surfaces and serpentine curves imbue the works with a sense of fragility and vulnerability. Giving the impression of illegible words or convoluted signatures, these works are less seeking to resolve conflicting sensations than give a form to the very idea of paradox, exposing the contradictions that structure existence through contorted yet fluid shapes.
Perceiving the world as a site of continuous oscillation between opposing forces, Potier’s work can be seen as an attempt to rewire and reconnect dispersed materials, sensations, and ideas. In a series of zinc plates engraved with words and abstract lines, the artist plays on the alliteration between Truth and Trust, generating a semantic slippage that encapsulates these terms’ loss of meaning in so-called ‘post-truth’ societies. Rendered in bold fonts, these words appear as headlines or slogans, while Potier’s intense gestures—scratching, crossing out, over-marking—materialise tensions between language and physicality, logic and emotion.
Before the dissolution of a common reality and the increasing polarisation of subjectivities, Potier’s works embody the permanent state of urgency and crisis we appear to be navigating. These sensations, however, are counterbalanced by their modular arrangements, which preserve a sense of openness and becoming. As its title suggests, Potier’s exhibition inhabits these spaces of tensions and instability through gestures and materials that, rather than indulging in forms of moralism or cynicism, seek to reveal the remaining potentials for engagement and intent.