Acne Paper's New Exhibition Erases The Line Between Artist And Artwork

A body covered in paint. A studio that looks more like a stage than a photography set. An image that feels less like it was captured than performed.

That's the world of Autoportrait, a new exhibition by photographer Carlijn Jacobs, opening at Palais Royal in Paris to celebrate thirty years of Acne Studios. Created for the latest issue of Acne Paper, the series stars model Lulu Tenney, but portraiture is only the starting point.

Instead of documenting a subject, Jacobs asks what happens when the subject becomes part of the artwork itself. The photographs borrow from wildly different creative languages.

There's the explosive physicality of Jackson Pollock's paint-splattered canvases, the theatrical glamour of Ann-Margret, and Yves Klein's fascination with using the human body as both brush and medium. Together, those references dissolve into something that feels strangely contemporary: messy, instinctive, and impossible to separate from the act of making it.

The studio becomes a place where photography, painting, movement, and performance all happen at once. Paint isn't simply applied to the body. It becomes an extension of it. Every gesture leaves a trace, every movement contributes to the final image, blurring the roles of artist, model, and canvas until they no longer feel distinct.

It's an idea that fits Acne Studios remarkably well.

For three decades, the brand has occupied an unusual space between fashion and contemporary art, often treating clothing as just one part of a much broader creative conversation. Autoportrait pushes that philosophy further, suggesting that self-expression isn't always about revealing who you are. Sometimes it's about disappearing completely into the process of creating something new.

The result feels less like a fashion exhibition than a meditation on transformation.

The unpredictable, exhilarating kind that only happens when you're willing to lose control for a moment and see what emerges instead.