L’État du Ciel
14 Feb - 07 Sep 2014
Des choses en moins, des choses en plus, Pierre Bismuth. Coproduction CNAP. Crédit photo: Aurélien Mole
L'ÉTAT DU CIEL
14 February - 7 September 2014
L’État du Ciel is a homage to many artists’, poets’ and philosophers’ reflections on the physical, moral and political factors that shape our world. Over the course of a season, it will present over ten proposals or exhibitions centering on that theme, as artists adopt André Breton’s definition of their role, as applied to Giorgio de Chirico: “The artist, that sentinel on the endless road, always on the lookout.” As far back as Goya, if not further, modern and contemporary artists have attentively examined contemporary reality. They often depict the landscape of our anxieties – dread, alarm, revolt, utopia – and suggest poetic ways of transforming the present. If we study the world as one might scrutinize an image, today stops being an imposed destiny and becomes a changing surface that we could, perhaps, transform.
New exhibition formats stem from these observations, innovative to the extent that the word “exhibition” may no longer apply. Thus, we will see Georges Didi-Huberman transpose the theme of lamentation into the language of film, inspired by Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas; Gérard Wacjman and Marie de Brugerolle reflect on the theme of the fall, from the Berlin Wall to the Twin Towers; and Thomas Hirschhorn, with his immense installation Flamme éternelle, which involves nearly 200 intellectuals and poets in a debate focusing on the interconnections between art and philosophy and the ways in which these affect our consciousness.
Add to that ten fictions conceived by Hiroshi Sugimoto on the theme of humanity‘s disappearance, Angelika Markul’s scrupulous exploration of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, David Douard’s viral hybrids of bodies and machines, and Ed Atkins’ digital variations. Each represents a symptom of the world’s general state, focusing on both contemplation and action. L’État du ciel – a title borrowed from Victor Hugo’s Promontoire du songe, in which the author wrote that “the sky’s normal state is at night” – addresses the current time, a political time in which seeing is already a means of action.
14 February - 7 September 2014
L’État du Ciel is a homage to many artists’, poets’ and philosophers’ reflections on the physical, moral and political factors that shape our world. Over the course of a season, it will present over ten proposals or exhibitions centering on that theme, as artists adopt André Breton’s definition of their role, as applied to Giorgio de Chirico: “The artist, that sentinel on the endless road, always on the lookout.” As far back as Goya, if not further, modern and contemporary artists have attentively examined contemporary reality. They often depict the landscape of our anxieties – dread, alarm, revolt, utopia – and suggest poetic ways of transforming the present. If we study the world as one might scrutinize an image, today stops being an imposed destiny and becomes a changing surface that we could, perhaps, transform.
New exhibition formats stem from these observations, innovative to the extent that the word “exhibition” may no longer apply. Thus, we will see Georges Didi-Huberman transpose the theme of lamentation into the language of film, inspired by Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas; Gérard Wacjman and Marie de Brugerolle reflect on the theme of the fall, from the Berlin Wall to the Twin Towers; and Thomas Hirschhorn, with his immense installation Flamme éternelle, which involves nearly 200 intellectuals and poets in a debate focusing on the interconnections between art and philosophy and the ways in which these affect our consciousness.
Add to that ten fictions conceived by Hiroshi Sugimoto on the theme of humanity‘s disappearance, Angelika Markul’s scrupulous exploration of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, David Douard’s viral hybrids of bodies and machines, and Ed Atkins’ digital variations. Each represents a symptom of the world’s general state, focusing on both contemplation and action. L’État du ciel – a title borrowed from Victor Hugo’s Promontoire du songe, in which the author wrote that “the sky’s normal state is at night” – addresses the current time, a political time in which seeing is already a means of action.