Pharmakon
Mathis Altmann , Nina Beier , Marcel Broodthaers , Chiki , Cosima von Bonin , Roberto Cuoghi , David Douard , Ana Viktoria Dzinic , Mimosa Echard , Felix Gonzalez-Torres , Andrew J. Greene , Wade Guyton , Pierre Huyghe , Brook Hsu , Dana Lok , Mike Kelley , Jean-Luc Moulène , Amy Sillman , Haegue Yang , Heimo Zobernig
Pharmakon, an exhibition held at Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, explores the multifaceted nature of the color green. The exhibition draws its title from the Greek word "pharmakon," signifying something that is both remedy and poison, whose effect is contingent on context, dosage, or usage. It brings together works by a multigenerational group of artists, both living and deceased, who examine green not as a simple chromatic attribute but as a field of forces.
The works presented investigate green's emotional and symbolic charge, revealing a color marked by contradiction and metamorphosis. Historically, green has been associated with harmony and the ordinary, yet the pigments used in its early applications proved toxic. This duality of growth and toxicity, care and contamination, promise and threat, is central to the exhibition. Green is presented as an unstable material, an operator of disturbance and displacement, challenging oppositions between nature and artifice, safety and danger, seduction and menace.