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Rumour Has It
Opening Friday 22nd of August
23.08–11.10.2025
At marytwo
Mariahilfgasse 2a
6004 Lucerne
Switzerland
Collectif Je t'aime, a group of eight artists who completed their BFA's
at ECAL in Lausanne in 2024, collaborate less as a brand than as a
reason to stay together. Their sculpture,
If the collective was a tattoo, how many laser sessions would it take
to erase it? (2025)
squats in the space like a leather-skinned arachnid on turned wooden
legs with two embedded screens. The artist's eight sweaty faces take it
in turns to answer questions on the first screen that tumble out of the
second, all to that recognisable buzzing and clicking sound of a tattoo
machine.
"How do you define an artist's success?", "What will be the end of the
collective? Should we set one, like Art Club 2000 did?", "Did ECAL make
you a good artist?", "What's your favourite way to forget?", "Which work
by another member of the collective would you have liked to make?". Each
question stencil transferred to the artists skin, all but ready to be
tattooed. The out of sync answers are sometimes funny, yet sometimes
painfully familiar.
This close-up of Collectif Je t'aime is messy, intense and alive. Just
like friendship itself!