AES+F, Carlos Aires, Hugo Alonso, Elodie Antoine, Katia Bourdarel,Daniele Buetti, Tom Dale, Delphine de Saxe-Cobourg, Jeroen Frateur,Till Freiwald, Lara Gasparotto*, Tanya Goel*, Gudrun Kampl*,David Kramer, Eckart Hahn, HEHE, John Isaacs, Michael Johansson,Félix Luque Sánchez*, Houston Maludi, Filip Markiewicz,Eugenio Merino, David Nicholson, Lamarche-Ovize, Léopold Rabus,Till Rabus, Terry Rodgers, Danny Rolph, Tracey Snelling, Pierrick Sorin,Mark Titchner, Gavin Turk, Eric Van Hove*, Jason Bard Yarmosky 

*guest artists

For the inauguration of its new space, Aeroplastics proposes a large exhibition whose title echoes the uncertainty in which our contemporary world is plunged: Come What May. More than thirty artists have been invited, each offering a personal and original reflection on the challenges that humanity is facing today, whether they are ecological, social, human or economic. However, it is not a question of producing a manifesto, nor a plea: the event is above all an opportunity to reaffirm the aesthetic line followed by Aeroplastics since its beginnings, characterized by a taste for audacity and experimentation, diversity, the hidden meaning of images and words, but also humor and the second degree. The paintings, sculptures, videos, drawings, photos or installations gathered here do not pretend to provide answers to the questions born of the present or future chaos, but invite to an open-mindedness that, it is not forbidden to dream, could help to change the course of things. Inspired by Frans Snyders' Concert of Birds, Les propriétés des choses  by Léopold Rabus depicts in a metaphorical tone the human species in all its diversity, condemned to live on the same tree, whose dead branches evoke the disturbing state of our planet. The crowds meticulously described by Houston Maludi also refer to the necessity of living together, while in Terry Rodgers' work, the groups seem to be composed of individuals lost in their own solitude. This feeling is found in Tracey Snelling's models, which reconstitute curiously deserted meeting places, or elaborate high constructions in which the slices of life are superimposed without ever touching. For Lara Gasparotto, on the other hand, contact with the other is essential: even when her models pose alone, the organic bond that unites them to the photographer is perceptible. This alchemy is found in Katia Bourdarel's paintings, a sensitivity she has developed by regularly painting her own children, while Hugo Alonso produces ambiguous portraits, both intimate and very secret. Jason Bard Yarmosky also focuses on his relatives, whom he likes to transfigure, not hesitating to put on his granparents superhero costumes for the occasion. As for Till Freiwald, while he generally portrays people he has met directly, with Gisozi Funeral he gives a face to the disappeared, some of the anonymous victims of the Rwandan genocide. 

At a time when we commemorate the twentieth anniversary of terrorist attacks that changed the course of the world, AES+F's war scene, taken from their film Allegoria Sacra, is reminiscent of the recent geopolitical turmoil in Central Asia. True to their aesthetic, the collective plays on the contrast between the gravity of the themes addressed and the beauty of the settings and characters staged. Painted and framed in the manner of a 17th century painting, the portrait of a young Kurdish woman by David Nicholson evokes the omnipresence of armed conflicts in the contemporary era with a touch of the past. As for Till Rabus, he refers to a more recent history of art to denounce in a humorous way the overconsumption of food.international summits follow one another to alert on the reality of climate change, but also on the loss of biodiversity: the elephant, more than ever a symbol of this situation, remains an object of fascination for many artists, as shown by the works of Carlos Aires, Filip Markiewicz, or Eckart Hahn. Animal themes, and more generally nature, are also very present in the work of John Isaacs, Elodie Antoine, or Florentine & Alexandre Lamarche-Ovize. Eric Van Hove and Felix Luque-Sanchez explore the world of mechanics, the former through a vast project that integrates the know-how of Moroccan artisans with economic and social issues, the latter by developing a retrofuturistic mythology around the automobile. Helen Evans & Heiko Hansen (HeHe) are already projecting themselves into a future, perhaps not so far away, where the car will have become the fastest way to reach Mars, in order to escape an Earth where even the Tate Modern would have been returned to its original function as a power station. Tom Dale and Eugenio Merino's poetic or offbeat objects are matched by Jeroen Frateur's constructions made of recycled materials (where Gavin Turk transposes them into hyperrealistic bronze copies), while Michael Johansson favors accumulations of objects that seem to have been manufactured with the aim of integrating the world of artistic creation. Recycling is sometimes found where we least expect it: it is with a wide variety of substances such as coal, aluminum, concrete, graphite ... that she recovers from demolition sites that Tanya Goel creates the pigments with which she elaborates her colored compositions, whose texture appears as a counterpoint to the smooth surfaces of Dany Rolph's paintings. Finally, as is often the case at Aeroplastics, words replace or respond to images in the works of Delphine de Saxe-Cobourg, David Kramer and Gudrun Kampl: injunctions, reflections or simple nouns invade the physical and mental space of the exhibition. But should we question ourselves with Mark Titchner (What Is Right? What Is True? What Is Real?), or believe with Daniele Buetti that, despite everything, There is Hope? P-Y Desaive