Opening reception: Saturday, March 14, 2026, from 3 to 5 p.m.
Herman Kolgen: LA PART DE NOUS
Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman developed the concept of “liquid modernity” to describe our era and the need for individuals to constantly adapt to their environment. Identity is no longer fixed; liquid, it flows and takes the shape of its container. It is this influence of the external world on our intimacy that LA PART DE NOUS seeks to expose.
Nine series of works form this exploration. LA PART DE NOUS marks a return to the studio for Kolgen, who is used to creating monumental works. Here, intimacy serves as his central thread. His goal is to invite us into his universe, but also to draw out part of our essence, of who we are.
Throughout, the audience participates and is immersed in this amalgam of experiences. Ephemerality is represented through our actions and the media, giving way to a resounding vulnerability. A saliva sample is required to activate the exhibition. This sample will then create a sonic imprint that will reverberate throughout the space for the rest of the day. We are thus invited to leave a part of ourselves behind in order to offer others an immersive experience of the exhibition. Saliva represents our words, our thoughts, our emotions, the most intimate part of our being. Furthermore, the instability and fragility of life are at the heart of the exhibition, shaped into balls through fragile materials, illustrating our share of vulnerability.
The effect of technology is also omnipresent, whether through the representation of its influence on our mood or the overconsumption of information. This leads us to want to distance ourselves from the world, to bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening around us. The duality of the material is also explored, by superimposing rough, hand-crafted concrete sculptures and luminous panels, which serve to illustrate this desire for weightlessness, to distance ourselves from the world and become castaways in it.
Large-scale drawings demonstrate the importance for Kolgen of letting his creativity speak, of letting go and representing his most intimate self – his unconscious. For him, it was this liberating act that sowed the seed for LA PART DE NOUS. Indeed, Kolgen sought “to break the link between thought and action, to short-circuit control and let what is swarming beneath the surface emerge”.
Intimacy takes different forms, such as men’s and women’s clothing marked by use, which then become fossilised traces. Kolgen describes them as architectures of the body, a kind of façade for who we are and who we want to be. At the same time, the heart, representing our essence, is stripped of its container, leaving only the flow that shapes it and makes it beat.
Finally, just as the heart represents who we are, the navel represents our origins for Kolgen. It is a reminder of our genesis, but also of our separation from a safe place and our vulnerability to the outside world. Different navels create different sonic traces, and we find ourselves faced with images larger than ourselves, confronting us with these markers of life and evolution that we all carry with us.
LA PART DE NOUS is a project that invites us to look deep within ourselves and question how the world around us constantly shapes us. At times, Kolgen invites us to confront and question ourselves, but also to take a step back and reground ourselves. He explains that for him, these series represent a “need to act on instinct. To create as we breathe: out of necessity, in order to exist”.
Herman Kolgen