Bonbonniere

2018
A series of 4 photographs, each of dimensions: 100 x 100 cm; spatial installation of variable size, readymade, herbarium.

For Plato, desire is not something that we should avoid but the first step in the ascending ladder in the act of love. Socrates thought that a young man must first learn to love the beautiful body. By loving a beautiful body, he can come to realise that this same body shares the beauty of other bodies and that it is impossible to love just one body. In loving beautiful bodies, we realise that beauty is within the body and the subject begins to love those who are beautiful in the soul, regardless of whether they are also beautiful in the body. As he turns from physical acceptance to intuitive, he gradually finds that beauty is formed by beautiful practices, habits and various customs as well as different types of knowledge and insight. Finally, man – the adolescent, is capable of experiencing the beauty of his own self, not just the apparition, appearance of beauty.

The Bonbonniere project records the processes of the disintegration of the act of love. The viewer is first presented with objects wrapped in cellophane and protective paper that conceal the beauty of his inner self. On the other hand, we are faced with the “inner beauty”, the content of the object.

Every encounter with a packet of chocolates is a surprise and a process of discovering the inner (wrapped) content. The box of chocolates represents the lascivious unravelling of the unknown behind the outer wrapper, opening of the cardboard, unwrapping of the cellophane surrounding the sweet, which can also be followed by an additional protective wrap, when we finally consume the chocolate middle and feel the taste, but cannot actually fully explain the experience of doing so to someone else. What remains in the end? An imprint on the bed that offers repeated encounters or disappointments, that stays in the showcase like a dead still-life – a sequence of experiences, memories, further desires.