L’usage des richesses — Salle Principale — la galerie — Opening — Slash Paris

Past: Sunday, January 24, 2021 2 PM → 6 PM

This is how we would like to begin the new year, by sharing the same conviction with our artists: the belief that we are the result of cosmic energies, and that tribute must be paid to the unproductive expenditure of art and the “loss-making pleasure” that accompanies it.
Georges Bataille raises the point that the problem is overabundance, not lack. In his investigation of the notion of “dépense” (expenditure), he shows that “human activity cannot be entirely reduced to processes of production and conservation” and that “it is not necessity but its opposite, luxury, that raises fundamental problems for living matter and mankind”. Human activity always produces excess, which we have to spend. ”If we do not have the strength to destroy excess energy ourselves…it destroys us; it is we who pay the price for the general explosion". This boils down to choosing between growth and expenditure.
Dominique Mathieu — 2021 (extract)