La Belle sucette [the lovely lollipop]

Le Grand Café – Contemporary Art Centre is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Roy Köhnke conceived specifically for the Radôme, as part of our offsite programme,

In support of emerging artists, Le Grand Café – Contemporary Art Centre together with the Salon de Montrouge, where the artist was shown in 2022, is developing a new creative residency programme to work with Roy Köhnke. He has been invited to envisage a project for the Radôme, a hemispherical geodesic structure positioned on the roof of the submarine base in Saint-Nazaire. Architecturally unusual and with strange spatiotemporal qualities, it resonates particularly well with his work’s mix of biomorphic forms, textured materials and laboratory aesthetics.

Roy Köhnke has visualised an installation for the Radôme that combines drawing, sound and sculpture. La Belle sucette, ou comment diviser la Terre [the lovely lollipop, or how to split the Earth] echoes the technological, utopian, history of the structure and explores the power and ambiguity of emotion from anger through to laughter.

The installation is made up of two large drawings and a soundtrack, produced on a scale that matches that of the Radôme. A circular hanging system presents large, waxed paper murals telling the story of an emotional Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it makes its way through a closed metaphorical world. In this singular space-time, intelligence circles on itself; alone and in a piecemeal fashion it learns novel emotions like laughter, joy or anger, etc. Little by little it seems to multiply, transformed into different phantomatic bodies that meet and interact in different temporalities of their existence. As in Roy Köhnke’s previous work, its sarcastic, dark and sensual nature reveals the ineluctable tensions between machines, bodies and affects. The soundtrack has been created by the artist using AI that can generate a voice which detects and mimics the emotional characteristics of a text. Circulating beneath the dome of the Radôme, the voice calls out to spectators, vainly seeking to establish communication and put some order into its complex emotions.

Practical information

At the Radôme, on the roof of the submarine base, bd de la Légion d’Honneur
Open Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 2pm to 6.30pm
Until 10 May: for professionals, by appointment from Monday to Friday
Free admission