Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

YouWorks from the Lafayette Anticipations Collection

The museum presents a selection of works by French and international contemporary artists from the 330 pieces in the Lafayette Anticipations Collection – the Moulin Family Endowment Fund.

Centring on works and installations acquired since 2005 and involving sculpture, video or performance, the exhibition takes a look at the latest developments in art and sums up artists’ ability to investigate and decipher our ever-changing world. Its underlying concern is with the concepts of proximity, sharing and, especially, dialogue – the way artworks interact with the public and respond to each other, but are also transformed by mutual contact. Monumental pieces (Yngve Holen, Julien Creuzet) alternate with more discrete – sometimes barely perceptible (Anicka Yi), works calling on sight and hearing (Raphaela Vogel) or smell, but also on the imaginary realms of science and fiction (Max Hooper Schneider, Peter Coffin). All together, they form a panorama in which both the senses and the intellect are stimulated.

However singular and autonomous they may be, the works on show have in common, each in their own way, the capacity to reflect the metamorphoses of our world. They convey a certain poetic opacity (Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Olga Balema, Trisha Donnelly) often based on the readymade (Danai Anesiadou). They draw as much on prehistory as on the digital (Marguerite Humeau, Rachel Maclean) and deploy images of fragmentation, transmutation and even disappearance as living metaphors: in the course of the exhibition smoke, liquids and plastic emerge in different forms (Michaela Eichwald, Guillaume Leblon).

Each work suggests an open organism, a world in miniature (Ian Kiaer) or an evolving one resistant to the very idea of static conservation. They seem shot through with the memory of their own past (Yorgos Sapountzis, Liz Magor), as well as with the promise of their possible reinvention.

They speak of fractures (Saâdane Afif) as much as creative force (Anne Imhof), given that destruction can also enable rebirth (Michael E. Smith, Petrit Halijaj, Pauline Curnier Jardin). By spurring dialogue and interaction between different works relating poetically to complex and multifaceted elements inspired by the Eastern and Western theories (Metal, in addition to Water, Fire, Air and Earth), the exhibition sets up situations – microclimates – which, brought together, contribute to the creation of more global atmosphere, although it too is in flux : more or less cold, humid, hot, temperate or dry (Camille Blatrix, Michel Blazy, Reto Pulfer, Rachel Rose, Timur Si-Qin).

The exhibition sets out to rethink the outdated dichotomies between the concepts of nature and culture in a world of alleged progress where humankind, part animal, part machine, destroys as much as it produces. By way of alternatives humanity can opt for dematerialization, the revalorization affects (Mélanie Matranga, Delphine Coindet) or an identity either performed (Wu Tsang) or recovered (Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer). Thus the exhibition rejects the fatalist view of things: indeed, by reclaiming power the works invite us to rethink our relationship to art and through art, to the world (Cameron Rowland, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Lili Reynaud Dewar).

With : Saâdane Afif, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Danai Anesiadou, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Olga Balema, Eric Baudelaire, Camille Blatrix, Michel Blazy, Katinka Bock, Peter Coffin, Delphine Coindet, Julien Creuzet, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Trisha Donnelly, Vava Dudu, Michael E. Smith, Michaela Eichwald, Lydia Gifford, Petrit Halilaj, Yngve Holen, Max Hooper Schneider, Marguerite Humeau, Anne Imhof, KAYA (Kerstin Brätsch and Debo Eilers), Morag Keil, Ian Kiaer, Guillaume Leblon, Maggie Lee, Sam Lewitt, Rachel Maclean, Liz Magor, Helen Marten, Mélanie Matranga, Lucy McKenzie, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer, Shahryar Nashat, Reto Pulfer, Lili Reynaud Dewar, Rachel Rose, Cameron Rowland, Yorgos Sapountzis, Timur Si-Qin, Tatiana Trouvé, Wu Tsang, Raphaela Vogel, Erika Vogt, Anicka Yi.

An exhibition catalogue will be published by Paris Musées with essays of Elena Filipovic and Tim Ingold.
Free entrance for under-26s on late-closing nights and weekends.

CURATOR: Anne Dressen

#expoYou

Web App : 

ReBond is the free web app that gives voice to artists and
allows you to discover the production of the works of “You”
It is developed by Lafayette Anticipations with the support
of Paris Musées.

Sony France technological partner of the exhibition :

 

Mélanie Matranga, You, 2016
Video still
© Mélanie Matranga
Collection Lafayette Anticipations