Exposition d'art contemporain au K.A.B

EXHIBITION FROM 21 October to 15 November 2026

Une datura sous l'oreiller

In situ installation by Louise-Margot Décombas

Curatorship and text: la collective glitch (Zélia Bajaj & Chloé Bonannini)

Artistic direction: Nathalie Borowski - Hubert Rivey

Opening reception open to all on Wednesday 21 October from 17h to 19h

Inside the square des Batignolles, strange creatures have taken up residence in a greenhouse. Under this glass shelter, the works of Louise-Margot Décombas seem to watch quietly over passers-by, unless they are spying on them, waiting for evening to set into motion.

Their presence transforms the Kiosque into a place of hybridization, on the threshold of bedroom, garden, and laboratory. In its center, organic and everyday forms fuse, distort, and change colors to give rise to new entities. At dusk, the creatures awaken: plants breathe or diffuse a glow, soft surfaces bristle with spikes, and objects change scale as if to assert their subjectivity. Facing this fantasized nature, it is difficult to know whether our mind is playing tricks on us or if we are dreaming with our eyes wide open. Can we trust this hybrid furniture to find shelter, or should we stay on guard?

The three sculptures by Louise-Margot Décombas blur our reference points while forging a material and emotional relationship with the objects surrounding us. From one work to another, furniture becomes shelter, body, or organism, bringing unexpected life forms to the surface behind customary uses. The works invite us to consider everyday objects as active and familiar presences, acting upon space and other bodies. These entities then seem less to inhabit the greenhouse than to develop their own world within it, at once intimate and autonomous.

Recalling a dream or a childhood memory, Une datura sous l’oreiller prolongs this dreamlike and uncanny atmosphere: a flower from the garden has slipped into the intimate space of the bedroom. The pillow, associated with sleep, memories, and reveries, suggests that moment when boundaries between what is experienced, imagined, and remembered become porous. A nocturnal and toxic flower, datura is associated with hallucination and disturbance. Nicknamed "witches' herb", it also evokes empirical knowledge linked to plants, transmitted outside institutional knowledge. Like the works in the exhibition, it brings forth, behind the ordinary, an unsuspected life, laden with feelings and memories.

About:

Louise-Magot Décombas graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris and the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon. She lives in Paris and works at La Cyberrance in Romainville. In her artistic practice, she stages narratives that convey an attachment to everyday furnishings and incorporate living spaces stemming from both the intimate sphere and public space. In her installations regularly combining sculptures and photographs, she strives to bring out the affects and memories running through them. Her research focuses on the appropriation of standardized habitats through individual appropriation like residential neighborhoods, working-class towns, and seaside estates, as well as on the obsolete yet ordinary forms of outdoor furniture.

With the support of the Ville de Paris and the support of the Fondation des Artistes.