Presented in partnership with the Arte Laguna Prize in Venice and curated by Valentina Peri, “Face to Faces” marks Inhye Lee's first foray into the French art scene. Selected from works made between 2006 and 2014, the pieces form a coherent journey around a central theme: the face as a territory of emotions, a complex interface between the inner world and the social world.

For Inhye Lee, the face is not simply a set of morphological features: it is a surface of projection and of affective communication between human beings. Her interactive installations invite visitors to take an active part in this process of emotional reading — sensors, cameras and algorithms becoming intermediaries that amplify, disrupt or reveal what the face expresses without our knowing. The photographic prints presented alongside offer a more contemplative dimension: here the artist captures fleeting expressions, moments of vulnerability or emotional intensity that turn photography into a study at once clinical and poetic. An intimate dialogue that ultimately returns us to our own capacity to perceive and interpret the emotions of others.

In partnership with the Arte Laguna Prize, Venice.

Curated by Valentina Peri

On the occasion of the first exhibition in France by the artist Inhye Lee, Galerie Charlot has selected interactive works made between 2006 and 2014 as well as photographic prints. Inhye Lee's work is centred on the human, and more precisely on the realm of feelings and emotions. The artist builds a reflection around the face, which reveals these sensations. This element is the common thread running through the selected works. At once playful and poetic, they always invite us to take part, and would not exist without the viewer's intervention. It is a very delicate body of work, whose complex technology is concealed by the finesse of the object and of the relationship we establish with it. Closely bound to the dimension of memory and remembrance, Inhye Lee's works instantly transport us back to childhood, inspired as they are by objects and toys from the past. We “recognise” them. At once comes the urge to play with them, through sound, handling or the gaze.

For this first collaboration with Inhye Lee, and thanks to the partnership with the Arte Laguna Prize, Galerie Charlot gave the artist carte blanche to create a new interactive work, to be discovered during the exhibition.

Valentina Peri - Excerpt from the downloadable catalogue (link on the left)