Lettres d’Amour

**Opening Tuesday, April 9, 7 to 10 p.m.

From love graffiti to break-up text messages, from epistolary romance to erotic literature, our words of love are written in letters. And every day, we all use, often distractedly and aloofly, without really looking at them, a set of small abstract signs that we use to concretely convey knowledge, information, feelings, ideas…

Between lettering, graffiti, calligraphy and character design, the Lettres d’amour exhibition explores contemporary lettering practices, through cross-disciplinary, multimedia, multi-dimensional, scholarly and vernacular approaches, from authors and designers as well as users.

The world of typography encompasses a multitude of different practices: from the meticulous drawing of a typeface to spontaneous gestures in urban spaces, to the challenges of inclusive writing. All share the same question of desire, the love of letters and words, the care given to forms as well as meanings.

It’s this dimension of love that the Lettres d’amour exhibition invites us to discover at Le Bel Ordinaire and in several key locations in the heart of Pau.

La Maison des éditions is an interdisciplinary collective of graphic designers and visual artists that produces multiples, publishes books, responds to graphic design commissions, and, since 2013, has collaborated with Le Bel Ordinaire to curate exhibitions dedicated to graphic design: Écoutez voir, Volumes, Voir et faire voir.

1 exhibition, 4 venues :
Le Bel Ordinaire, Billère
In its 3 rooms, the large gallery will host 3 different exhibitions and an outdoor in situ creation.
Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau welcomes Hélène Marian to its peristyle for a site-specific installation that will be visible from the street.
The Médiathèque A Labarrère welcomes François Chastanet and lends him its patio, where he displays a quotation taken from a book in the collection.
Les Halles de Pau will join the adventure in May, hosting the outcome of a workshop with students from ESAD Pyrénées, supervised by Ivan Bléhaut.