PROCESS
OVER
OBJECTS
Espace Parallèle
Paris, France
From February 19 to 22, 2026, Saints la nuit and Lacase contemporaine present Process Over Objects, a group exhibition curated by Nour Tournier and Ronan Debosque. Artists Estèla Alliaud, Eric Baudart, Sofía Bonilla Otoya, Sarah Cotelle, Ronan Debosque, Antonin Detemple, Clément Grimm, Adrien Lagrange, Maya Le Bars, Inès Machfar, Capucine Merle, Mia Mongiello, and Clément Schaab embrace ruins in reverse as so many potentials for inhabiting the contemporary.
Clément Grimm, Funny How Secrets Travel, 2026 © Ronan Debosque
Entropy is ever-increasing. Derived from thermodynamics, this notion has become a paradigm of our era: the universal law of the inescapable degradation of systems. If everything we know today is destined to degrade—despite every attempt at material stabilization and every illusion of permanent order—then everything is but an ephemeral reprieve before the renegotiation of forms.
Process Over Objects was born from this physical realization in its human reality. Faced with the unraveling of our historical reference points and the resulting impossibility of projection, the exhibition proposes to inhabit instability rather than fear it: "everything’s dissolving, babe, according to plan" ***.
Exhibition view © Ronan Debosque
The gathered works carry within themselves the precariousness of form and matter, exploring entropy as a poetic and critical engine of disruption. Some alter visibly, shifting and recomposing. Others will remain unchanged on the scale of our human lifespans, subtly undermining over time the notions of precarious balance and linear progress. They pose no problems, for they refuse the illusion of goals. They stand as monuments to collapse, heirs to a new consciousness of the lethargic and the ideal.
The curation is conceived in situ, within a space that is itself a condition of time. Traversed by the same contradictions as the studio, it is a site of simultaneous construction and destruction, where order and chaos coexist without ever resolving.
From left to right: Elsa De Smet, Antonin Detemple, Pierre Uzan © Ronan Debosque
TALK WITH ANTONIN DETEMPLE, ELSA DE SMET AND PIERRE UZAN
From left to right: Elsa De Smet, Antonin Detemple, Pierre Uzan © Ronan Debosque
TALK WITH ANTONIN DETEMPLE, ELSA DE SMET AND PIERRE UZAN
Within the framework of the exhibition, artist Antonin Detemple, Doctor of History of Art and visual studies specialist Elsa De Smet, and Doctor of Philosophy of Science Pierre Uzan are invited to engage in a dialogue surrounding the notion of entropy and its potential within contemporary creation.
Conceived as a space for dialogue between science and creation, the Entropic Talk proposes to approach the notion not merely as a physical principle, but as a sensory, everyday, and deeply human experience.
A discussion to be (re)discovered online here.
Antonin Detemple (b. 1990 in Strasbourg) is a visual artist whose nomadic and multidisciplinary practice explores the interdependencies between humanity and the living world, utilizing speculative fiction to question the impact of our global myths on the transformation of the biosphere.
Elsa De Smet is an art historian specializing in visual studies. She is the author of several volumes, including Voir l’Espace : astronomie et science populaire illustrée (1840-1969), published in 2016 by Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg (PUS), and Voir sans limites : sciences, techniques et esthétiques des origines, released in 2025 by Éditions Mimésis. She currently serves as Head of Audiences and Cultural Development at Centre Pompidou-Metz.
Pierre Uzan holds a doctorate in the philosophy of science and is an associate professor-researcher at the Institut Catholique de Paris within the "Religion, Culture, and Society" Research Unit. He is an associate researcher at the CHArt laboratory (Human and Artificial Cognition), an interdisciplinary unit bridging Paris 8 University, EPHE, and UPEC. His work focuses on the interfaces between cognitive systems and the theoretical frameworks of physics.
Saints la nuit and Lacase contemporaine extend their most sincere gratitude to Maxime Talleu, head of artistic production, and to the teams at Espace Parallèle for their warm hospitality.
* An itinerant art center dedicated to the exhibition and experimentation of contemporary art, founded by Ronan Debosque.
**Those that come into being rather than those that remain, cf. Robert Smithson (1938-1973).
*** Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Abattoir Blues.
