Le Baiser
Ange Leccia
‘Deux machines, deux sources de lumière. Pas pour produire une image, mais pour créer une situation. Un face-à-face, une tension.’ - Ange Leccia
In Ange Leccia’s Le Baiser (1985 - 2024), two film spotlights are placed face-to-face on the floor. In a nod to the generic kiss in legendary films, the artist says the installation is, ‘a conversation, a human relationship’. The heat and energy of the beams of light are a metaphor for the intensity of two lovers meeting, encapsulating and prolonging a transitory emotional state. Romantic in spite of its industrial nature, the work belongs in the tradition of kisses in sculpture - from Auguste Rodin to Constantin Brancusi - although Leccia subverts the aesthetic codes of that tradition.
Creating this work, Leccia was looking for ‘l’émotion, l’affect, la sensation’, to create the energy supposedly produced by an encounter that is never fully accomplished. In this context, the spectator plays a central role, as ‘c’est dans son regard qu’existe l’œuvre, dans sa perception d’un face-à-face sans résolution.’ The work originated in response to a 1984 commission from the magazine Artistes. Originally using cinema projectors, Leccia created a new version in 2000, maintaining the same principles but using spotlights instead of cinema projectors, and changing the colour of the lights to pink. ‘C’est le même geste,’ he says, ‘mais déplacé, mis à jour en quelque sorte. Une manière de dire que le désir persiste.’
1985 / 2024 – Pink fresnel projectors, 65 x 115 x 46 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Florac Works, Paris
Ange Leccia
°1952, Minerviù, Corsica, France
After studying visual arts, Ange Leccia started a double activity as a visual artist and filmmaker, and began his research as a member of the Academie de France in Rome. His creations question the very media they employ, intertwining and then opposing them in a rhythmic atmosphere. He mainly uses film or photographic images, conceiving his works (especially his arrangements) as cinematographic moments. Across his body of work, he combines portraits, landscapes, and narratives, often drawing motifs from nature and capturing moments where intimacy and intensity generate a particularly sensitive visual texture. Ange Leccia’s work has been exhibited worldwide, a.o. at the Museum of Modern Art in the city of Paris, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Kassel Documenta, the Skulptur Projekte in Münster, the Venice Biennale, Seibu Museum, and Hiroshima Art Document. Most recently, his work was included in the Noor Festival at Riyad (2023), at the Louvre Abu Dhabi (2023), at the Sungkok Art Museum at Seoul in Korea (2024), the Lyon Biennale in France (2024) and the Ukrainian Museum of New York (2025). Ange Leccia lives and works in Paris and in Corsica, France. He is represented by the Jousse Entreprise in Paris.
Photo: Ange Leccia © Grégoire Vieille. Courtesy the artist