PARIS.- Jeanne Bucher Jaeger presents Garden of love, an exhibition inspired by Guillaume Logé's book of the same title, and curated by its author. For more than a century, the gallery's identity has naturally resonated with this theme, as reflected in its longstanding commitment to artists whose creative practice is guided by universal, social, environmental, and humanistic values. These are artists who work with the forces of nature, weaving together humanity, history, memory, the cycle of the seasons, the immemorial, and the present day. Spanning from ancient arts to contemporary creation, the exhibition brings together works from different periods in a dialogue centered on nature and love.

What if love were to reinvent itself by opening up to nature? The decline of the traditional couple, the blurring of gender lines, and the omnipresence of digital technology: romantic relationships are undergoing a period of profound change. At the same time, climate change and growing ecological awareness have placed nature firmly at the center of human existence. These parallel developments point toward the emergence of a mythology of love that is at once new and deeply ancient. Against the backdrop of contemporary disenchantment, Garden of love explores a simple yet bold proposition: that the fulfillment of love requires us to move beyond the exclusively human relationship and embrace nature as a fully-fledged partner. The figure of Homo sapiens (the supposedly rational and all-knowing human) gives way to what the author calls Homo amorosus (the human being defined by an innate capacity for love). From Greek Eros to Egyptian, Olmec, and Indian cosmogonies, from ancient masterpieces to the most contemporary artistic creations, Guillaume Logé traces this idea across cultures and throughout history.

The exhibition, bringing together artists represented by the gallery alongside invited artists, is structured around Yang Jiechang's monumental work Tale of the Eleventh Day – Red Autumn (2014–2024), which occupies a central place in Garden of love. Executed in the traditional Gongbi ("meticulous painting") technique, the work is composed of successive washes of ink and mineral pigments applied layer upon layer to Xuan paper or silk. Part of the Tale of the Eleventh Day series, it explores the notions of control and balance that govern life in a globalized world. Yang Jiechang imagines a primordial landscape, a kind of paradise, which he draws according to the classical conventions of traditional Chinese painting. The title Tale of the Eleventh Day refers to Boccaccio's Decameron (1348–1353), also known as The Book of the Ten Days.

In this masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, ten young people flee the plague and take refuge in an idyllic countryside, where they entertain one another by telling stories over the course of ten days. Yang Jiechang invites us to imagine what happened on the eleventh day. Yet Yang's universal landscape, populated by interactions between animals of different species as well as between humans and animals, is an allegory of our contemporary world. His visual language is austere, refined, and universal. His paradise, where communication and action appear possible in a spirit of complete impartiality, evokes a globalized world founded on equality, respect, and compassion. Tale of the Eleventh Day thus becomes an allegory of this timeless utopia, imagined throughout human history.

"The turning point our world is currently experiencing has nature as its central axis. Because of the irreversible transformations already inflicted upon it—transformations whose consequences will endure for centuries, perhaps even millennia—nature will increasingly become the structuring force of our lives. It has once again become the determining factor in human thought. Any conceptual framework that fails to place nature at the heart of its reflections has now become nothing more than an abstract fiction detached from reality. Why should love be any exception? On the contrary, and as I began to suggest, love, because it is intrinsically linked to nature, will undergo changes. The cultural foundation upon which its myths are built is itself changing fundamentally. Arthur Rimbaud's wish (1854–1891) will undoubtedly come to fruition: love will be reinvented (...).

In Persian and Mughal traditions, the garden is called pairi-daēza—the etymological origin of the word 'paradise.' It is the setting for the highest ecstasies and moments of rapture. Poets such as Hāfez (1325-1390), Saʿdī (1210-1291) or Nezāmī (1130-1209) use the garden as the setting for their mystical and secular loves, that is for their most profound existential experiences. The garden and love go hand in hand. Yet a garden is never simply given; it is the result of hard work—and first and foremost, inner work (just like love!). It requires learning, respect, and care. Attention—perhaps even an 'attentional trance'—takes on a philosophical dimension, nourished by decentering oneself and suspending an exclusively human perspective. It is there that dialogue begins.

Garden of love explores the indispensable role of nature in human love. By love, I follow Edgar Morin in understanding a polymorphous and evolving complexity that combines, to varying degrees, sexuality, eroticism, and emotion. Revolution? Yes, insofar as it suggests that the triadic relationship between Self, the Other, and Nature holds the key to love's fullest realization. What remains is to understand the alliance between these partners. (...)

An inner life severed from the outer world ultimately leads to its own undoing. Many of our personal as well as collective challenges would find a path toward resolution if we simply stepped outside and breathed more deeply in the open air. The garden of love invites precisely this shift in perspective. It offers the path toward a free human being, reconciled with both self and others—human and non-human alike—upon a living Earth.

Love in the Anthropocene will not resemble the love of the Modern Age. Its points of reference, its interlocutors, its roots and branches, without necessarily severing all ties—will take on new references. The question is whether these will emerge from the dehumanized and deterritorialized universe of digital technology which increasingly proposes emotional and sexual substitutes through algorithms and artificial intelligence, itself carrying a considerable ecological footprint—or whether they will spring from a nature that is listened to, experienced, and protected. (...)

In its fullest expression, love therefore unites humans and non-humans alike. It is rooted in a vision of the world that is at once scientific and poetic: marvellous naturalism. This perspective is as acutely aware of the ecological challenges and the many forms of violence affecting our societies as it is inspired by the beauty of life revealed in the smallest blade of grass. It embraces both physical and psychological processes, matter and dream, mathematical formula and fairy tale. From this emerges an ethics guided not by law, but by the impulse of the heart. What we truly love within this alliance, we naturally wish to protect. The quality of attention we extend to one another broadens to encompass the living world itself. The garden of love is the space in which Homo amorosus, the hoped-for successor to Homo sapiens, may come into being! It prescribes no particular place in which to live; rather, it is first and foremost an attitude—a state of openness in mind and feeling toward all the possible partners that surround us and invite our affection."