SALO XII

The 12th salon of erotic drawing welcomes artists from all around the world, all ages and social backgrounds. The selection process doesn’t follow traditional background checks and CVs, like most galleries.

Whether a drawing is interesting or not, like a book or a film, it is a subjective matter. This salon exhibits artworks depending on their own worth, rather than if an artist is with a reputable gallery or went to a prestigious school, which often depends of their socioeconomic background and their talent for communication.

Then there’s the selection, subjective as it depends on my current interests, akin to Madame Verdurin who listed her guests according to her moods.  When Salo was created 12 years ago, it was outdated because few taboos inhabited exhibition spaces and the very notion of a salon was outdated.

With mouvements like ‘Metoo’ and LGBTQIA+ claims came further notions of respect of everyone.

Attention expanded to nature, plants, and small animals. The “Law of the Strongest” as denounced by Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Pier Paolo Pasolini in “Salo” lost its aura. No one can mistreat an animal anymore, let alone a human being, without risking the wrath of social media.

It’s the theory of new evolution, of equality, to restart history from the beginning, before the birth of religions, states, and the power of a selected few over the world.

It’s dozens, then hundreds and thousands of individual changes that alter a society and eroticism reinvents itself in Salo from year to year.

Laurent Quénéhen, Curator of Salo XII.