Jeanne Susplugas - The King Without a Crown

French artist Jeanne Susplugas has developed, since the 2000s, a resolutely engaged practice that examines the many forms of confinement, whether physical, mental or social. Through her work, she explores the relationships and distortions of the individual with themselves and with others, in an obsessive and dysfunctional world. Straddling drawing, sculpture and new technologies, her work gives rise to a singular aesthetic, seemingly attractive but quickly unsettling and abrasive. Her practice offers a reflection on the ills of our society, not devoid of humor, derision, even cynicism, and places the viewer in front of contradictory sensations.

The King Without a Crown is a multi-screen installation centered on opera singer René Pape, questioning the human being behind the characters he embodies. Through a succession of roles (king, servant, seducer, father, demon, figure of power or vulnerable being), he becomes a mirror of the identities we take on in everyday life. Opera, where desire, violence, love, domination, fear and betrayal are heightened, thus becomes a metaphor for the world. The film is both an intimate face-to-face with the singer and, through the multiplication of screens, a fragmented and dizzying space, reflecting a world saturated with roles, injunctions and power relations. The installation questions the madness of the world and the potential for psychological breakdown.

A graduate in art history from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Jeanne Susplugas (born in 1974 in Montpellier) now lives and works in Paris, having lived abroad for several years and made numerous stays overseas, notably in New York. Her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in France and internationally, notably at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, the triennial De leur temps (2) at the Musée de Grenoble, the Villa Medici in Rome, the MAMC (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) in Saint-Étienne, the Villa Datris in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and Paris, the Fondation EDF in Paris, the Philharmonie de Paris, La maison rouge – Fondation Antoine de Galbert in Paris, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Pioneer Works in New York, Images Vevey, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York, MOCCA in Toronto and the Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum, as well as in Tokyo, Beijing and Melbourne. Her works are held in private and public collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou, the CNAP, the MRAC Occitanie, the MUDAC in Lausanne, several FRACs and the Bass Museum in Miami. She is represented by Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach in Brussels.