At Sceners Gallery, the exhibition Forms and Temptations, presented with Almine Rech, brings Allen Jones into dialogue with a rare constellation of early modern design figures, including leading 20th-century design. On view from April 13th to June 13th, 2026, the presentation probes the unstable boundary where object, body, and desire intersect.
Rather than separating art and design, the exhibition stages a charged dialogue between Pop Art and early modernist production, where function gives way to seduction, friction, and autonomy. Objects no longer sit comfortably within utility; they exist as charged presences, constantly renegotiating meaning.
20th-century designers and the liberation of the object
Works by Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, Carlo Bugatti, Jean Dunand, Koloman Moser, and Pierre Legrain form the historical backbone of the exhibition. These 20th-century design pioneers gradually loosened the grip of pure function, allowing furniture and objects to take on sculptural weight and psychological presence. Their craftsmanship pushes material into heightened expression, where use becomes secondary to form and presence.
Allen Jones: Pop, body, and the mechanics of desire
Emerging from the Pop moment of the 1960s, Allen Jones intensifies this trajectory into a more explicit register of corporeality and desire. His works place the body at the centre of projection and distortion, where human form and object begin to echo one another in uneasy proximity. Desire, in Jones’ language, operates structurally embedded in the logic of construction rather than narrative.
His sculptural practice, often linked to fetish aesthetics and cultural liberation, pushes objects into a liminal zone between figure, surface, and fantasy.
Three works, one shared tension
Across the exhibition, Jones’ sculptures enter into direct friction with design history. Figurative works collapse body and furniture into hybrid forms, where surface tension replaces anatomical clarity. Nearby, Ruhlmann and Moser’s designs reveal an earlier drift away from strict utility, with chairs and cabinets already edging toward sculptural autonomy.
Jean Dunand’s lacquer surfaces and Pierre Legrain’s radical compositions extend this shift further, unsettling ornament and geometry alike. Together, these works sketch a continuum from crafted utility to psychologically charged objecthood.
Forms and Temptations at the SCENERS GALLERY, with the participation of ALMINE RECH
Photography by MELANIE RAMON, OLIVIER LEONE / PRAGMA
