Promesse de bonheur is a sculptural composition consisting of a 3D-printed boat placed on a simulated water surface, resin blocks in blue tones, a resin cast containing artificial pubic hair, and a resin block embedding yellow plastic flowers. The elements are arranged in a balanced, geometric configuration that recalls the visual language of constructivist painting.
All materials in the work are artificial, frozen, and inert. Water does not flow, the boat does not move, flowers do not wither, and desire is preserved rather than lived. The composition evokes summer as an image rather than an experience: a season reduced to signs, colors, and surfaces.
Despite its formal clarity and apparent lightness, the work carries a subdued melancholy. It does not depict pleasure itself, but the memory of having once expected it. The title, borrowed from Stendhal, points toward happiness as anticipation, as projection into the future. Here, that promise has already passed. What remains is a residue: a still life of expectations absorbed by time.
The inclusion of pubic hair introduces a subtle disturbance. Even intimacy is rendered artificial, archived, and immobilized. The work thus reflects on how desire, memory, and happiness are increasingly experienced as simulations, carefully preserved yet emptied of risk and immediacy.