EROS/THANATOS explores the enduring tension between the forces of desire (Eros) and death (Thanatos) — twin compulsions around which the human experience perpetually turns. Drawing on mythology, psychoanalysis, and art history, the exhibition traces how artists across centuries have long dwelt in this contradiction, where desire gestures towards destruction, and beauty is an expression of decay.

Inspired by the writings of Georges Bataille, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung, the works on display capture moments of divine ecstasy and rapturous dissolution. From the seductive, violent energy of Francis Bacon’s Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe (1968), to the haunting skull of a Late Pleistocene Woolly Mammoth, EROS/THANATOS revels in the sublime contradiction of love, life, art and death.

EROS/THANATOS, rather than seeking to reconcile the forces of desire and death, heightens the experience of both, compelling us to linger in the places where desire burns brightest against the inevitability of its ending.

*No admission under age 18

Venue address: G/F, Sotheby’s Maison, Landmark Charter, Central