Heurtebise
Laura Benson, Johanna Hedva, Jacopo Mazzetti, Jessica Luostarinen and Angelo Iodice
curated by Riccardo Greco
2 - 31 May, 2026
Private View: 1 May, 18:00 - 20:00
Orphée, Jean Cocteau, film, 1950; The Infernal Machine and other plays, Jean Cocteau, 1932; Nadja, Andrè Breton, 1928; Orphée : Extraits de la tragédie d'Orphée ainsi que des films Orphée et Le Testament d'Orphée, Jean Cocteau, Univers Des Lettres Bordas, 1973; The Witch's Cradle, Maya Deren, 1944; La Venere Anatomica, Joanna Ebenstein, 2017; Alexander McQueen, detail, Fall ’98
DES BAINS is pleased to present Heurtebise, a group exhibition curated by Riccardo Greco, featuring works by Laura Benson, Johanna Hedva, Angelo Iodice, Jessica Luostarinen and Jacopo Mazzetti.
Taking its title from the androgynous and enigmatic figure of the chauffeur-angel in Orphée by Jean Cocteau, Heurtebise, gloved and discreet, facilitates passage through mirrors, treating them not as surfaces but as permeable portals. The exhibition unfolds within this logic of transit, as a space in which bodies, objects and images are held in states of latent tremor, suspension and return.
Rather than staging Surrealism as a visual language, the exhibition approaches it as a condition of passage, historically shaped as much by its omissions as by its forms. In this sense, it gestures toward submerged genealogies of the movement, traceable in works such as Dark Spring by Unica Zürn or the unfinished film The Witch’s Cradle by Maya Deren, in which Surrealism unfolds not as spectacle but as a space of interiority and embodied knowledge, a more intimate and subterranean line that both traverses and displaces its more canonical formulations.
Within the exhibition, matter appears in states of instability. It condenses until it becomes a passage, structures both support and wound, and objects accumulate as carriers of memory rather than fixed meaning. The body is never fully present nor entirely absent, but persists through processes of fragmentation, concealment and recomposition.
Operativity emerges as process, activated through repetition, containment and gesture. Forms suggest protection while simultaneously exposing vulnerability; containers become sites of capture as much as preservation. Authorship loosens, allowing the works to remain open to manipulation, displacement and transformation over time. Anatomical metallic Venuses, shell memoirs, napkins from a phantom banquet present themselves as portraits of silent figures.
Taking its title from the androgynous and enigmatic figure of the chauffeur-angel in Orphée by Jean Cocteau, Heurtebise, gloved and discreet, facilitates passage through mirrors, treating them not as surfaces but as permeable portals. The exhibition unfolds within this logic of transit, as a space in which bodies, objects and images are held in states of latent tremor, suspension and return.
Rather than staging Surrealism as a visual language, the exhibition approaches it as a condition of passage, historically shaped as much by its omissions as by its forms. In this sense, it gestures toward submerged genealogies of the movement, traceable in works such as Dark Spring by Unica Zürn or the unfinished film The Witch’s Cradle by Maya Deren, in which Surrealism unfolds not as spectacle but as a space of interiority and embodied knowledge, a more intimate and subterranean line that both traverses and displaces its more canonical formulations.
Within the exhibition, matter appears in states of instability. It condenses until it becomes a passage, structures both support and wound, and objects accumulate as carriers of memory rather than fixed meaning. The body is never fully present nor entirely absent, but persists through processes of fragmentation, concealment and recomposition.
Operativity emerges as process, activated through repetition, containment and gesture. Forms suggest protection while simultaneously exposing vulnerability; containers become sites of capture as much as preservation. Authorship loosens, allowing the works to remain open to manipulation, displacement and transformation over time. Anatomical metallic Venuses, shell memoirs, napkins from a phantom banquet present themselves as portraits of silent figures.
Voluble forms coagulate into structures that oscillate between relic and apparition. A velvet tower rises as an ambiguous signal, at once refuge and device of capture, traversed by a restrained vitality that unsettles its stillness. Elsewhere, a bouquet emerges from a rectilinear head, surfacing from an already compromised matter in which blossoming does not redeem but insists as a venefic excess, holding within it a promise of disintegration. A blackened hand supports small votive flames, not in an act of devotion but of consumption, a minimal altar in which transformation unfolds as a slow, deliberate combustion.
Heurtebise does not resolve these tensions but sustains them, proposing the exhibition as a space of continuous negotiation. Here, unease is not an event but a condition, a state of suspension in which the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial, remain in constant exchange.
Heurtebise does not resolve these tensions but sustains them, proposing the exhibition as a space of continuous negotiation. Here, unease is not an event but a condition, a state of suspension in which the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial, remain in constant exchange.
installation views
Laura Benson, For the Sake of Sincerity, 2024 - 2026, Gelli-plate print on found paper, lead-free solder, glass, 27.5 x 18.5 cm
Laura Benson, Blisters Burgeon Bright, 2026, Spun cotton, antique metal candle holders, wood, 9 x 25 x 9.5 cm (without candles)
installation view
Jessica Luostarinen, Fitting - 4, 2026, Oil on linen, 60 x 45 x 4 cm
Laura Benson, Easy Bruising, 2026, Gelli-plate print on found paper, lead-free solder, glass, 27.5 x 18.5 cm
Laura Benson, Easy Bruising (Ghost Print), 2026, Gelli-plate ghost print on found paper, lead-free solder, glass, 27.5 x 18.5 cm
installation view
Johanna Hedva, The archive is so many ghosts wrapped up in hands covered in spit, 2024, Ink, liquid acrylic ink, and glue on watercolour paper, knife for wall mounting, 30 x 40 cm
Johanna Hedva, A creature that has been named for a repressed mother and is transformed into an icon., 2024, Liquid watercolour concentrate and liquid metallic ink on watercolour paper, knife for wall mounting, 48 x 36 cm
Jessica Luostarinen, Cuirass, 2026, Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 x 2 cm
installation view
Laura Benson, Velvet Tower, 2026, Gelli-plate print on found paper, lead-free solder, glass, 27.5 x 18.5 cm
Jessica Luostarinen, San Ángel, 2026, Oil on linen, 25 x 20 x 4 cm
Jessica Luostarinen, Button Up, 2026, Oil on canvas, 10 x 8 x 2 cm
Jacopo Mazzetti, Dimentional Absorption (R.1), 2026, Pigments and oil on silicium, 55 x 167 x 2.5 cm
Jacopo Mazzetti, Meteorite, 2026, Pigments and oil on silicium panel, 105 x 46 cm
Angelo Iodice, Corteggiamento Calma (II), Found vases
Jessica Luostarinen, Napkin And Shell, 2026, Oil on linen, 30 x 25 x 4 cm
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