Half a century after the beginnings of Pop art, French artist Bruno Peinado has reenergized the punchy midcentury aesthetic, complicating it with visual play and verbal pun. In an interview with Patrice Joly, published in the catalogue accompanying “Casino Incaos,” Peinado’s exhibition last year at Casino Luxembourg, the artist is clear that he “was interested in Pop not because [he] wanted to make neo-Pop Art, but because the world was displaying this great interest in the notion of popular culture.” In the original French version of their conversation, Peinado refers to la notion du populaire

The French artist Emmanuelle Lainé, born in 1973, has previously given us bio- or even anthropomorphic drawings and roughly finished sculptures made out of materials ranging from concrete, plaster, and resin to grease, chocolate powder, and glue: bachelor machines and bondage gear that flirt with the history of science and of art (one of her recent pieces, LO, 2009, a case lined with mdf, was inspired by Picasso’s sleeping nudes) and favor an anachronistic approach. “I am not a modern,” the artist told me. “I don’t believe in ruptures but in a continuous history.”

In her recent show “Effet cocktail