Documentation

243 Luz is delighted to present Lie down I think I love you, I.W. Payne’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

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In a new installation the artist reflects on the intimacy, ambiguity, and contradictions of the kiss. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ concept of the punctum, Payne positions the kiss as the ultimate point of rupture—tender and disruptive, generous and selfish, saccharine and ungovernable.

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‘You Don’t Own Me’ , a song released by Lesley Gore in 1963 plays in the headphones of a male silhouette. Throughout the late 20th Century, the song was heralded as a mainstream feminist anthem. The song was written for Gore by two men when she was 17 years old. Through combining the song, photographic image and stereotypically masculine silhouettes, Payne works through the complexities and inconsistencies of power and gender roles assumed in most heterosexual relationships. 

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The exhibition is populated by symbolic figures: a loved up couple, a distracted child director with an owl companion, and two ghost writers whose authority is both ironic and fragile. Repeating motifs in Payne’s work, of lips, socks and feathers together develop an atmosphere where love, doubt, and desire are stalked by a Lynchian disquiet.  

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Playful and melancholic, the installation reflects the artist’s ongoing fascination with images and symbols, and the transformative potential of looking—an act she likens to the consciousness-shifting power of a kiss.