Artists

Elena Alonso, Carina Emery, Christin Khauka, Isabelle Young, Kilian Rüthemann, Mark Wallinger, Sarah Dwyer, Vincent Grange, Xiao Guo Hui

Press release

Amour propre - it puts the self in the place of God (after Blaise Pascal).

Self regulation, self control, self improvement, self optimisation, sculpting yourself, designing your soul…me myself and I…sounds like the calling of the day. What we can do of it, what we really want of it, is one thing. Nothing seems impossible any more, and perhaps nothing should be impossible, is the other. 

You could also say that all this has to do with excesses of increased self-love. But the word is much more than that. In French, a distinction is made between amour-propre and amour-soi. “…until very recently English translators have consistently rendered the term in ways that suggest only the negative aspects of amour‐propre:1 ‘vanity’, ‘egotism’, and ‘pride’ all obscure the crucial point that, despite its many dangers, amour‐propre also has a unique potential to enrich and elevate human existence.” (Frederick Neuhauser). As Rousseau claims: “‘all our labors are directed at only two objects: the comforts of life for oneself and consideration among others’.