A work from the immersive exhibition created by students from Beaux-Arts de Paris at Espace Niemeyer, engaging with the architecture to offer a sensory and poetic experience around love and the memory of the place.
Noli me tangere, olfactory installation, sculpture (3D printing, metal), 2026 The starting point for this spatial intervention is the myth of the origin of love in Le Banquet de Platon. In Aristophane’s speech, humans were once spherical beings, with two heads, two arms, and two legs. Zeus, judging them far too powerful, cut them in two, thus giving rise to the quest to find “the other half.” This division, or rather this doubling, instinctively resonates with the microscopic imagery of the blastocyst. In mammals, this first cellular division marks the beginning of a potential for life. Through its fluid layout, Niemeyer’s architecture evokes an organic intercellular space, where there are neither barriers nor right angles cutting through the space. Every line is an invitation to pass through. These lines of thought materialize in the form of an ‘formless’ mass supported by a metal structure, underscored by an olfactory component. The smell, emanating from the body of the structure, diffuses its presence beyond its physical limits. The choice of scent - that of laundry detergent - is rooted in a universally recognizable olfactory register: invoking the intimacy of freshly washed sheets, a closed and protected space, sheltered from the torments outside - from dust and noise - sketching out a form of sensory refuge. Kit Szasz is an interdisciplinary artist of Romanian and Hungarian origin, who graduated from ESBA Mo.Co. in 2024. His preferred tool is the gaze. He develops a lexicon of forms that question matter, decay, and duration. Through the assemblage of everyday objects, he seeks to bring forth the fragmented survivals of intimate narratives. The banal, the anecdotal, and the morbid intertwine with soft words. Inarticulate, memories slip away. Eventually, all reality becomes fiction. A project co-produced as part of an educational partnership with École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, with the participation of Espace Niemeyer. STUDENTS OF THE FILIÈRE FRESQUE & ART EN SITUATION AT ÉCOLE NATIONALE DES BEAUX-ARTS DE PARIS / Falando de Amor
Source: paris.fr — photo: ©Kit Szasz