20/2/2012
Thomas Huber - Cecile Bart
Mamco, Geneve
Five Huber's large billboards have been installed in the quartier des Bains and Les Acacias neighborhood, on the Plainpalais plain, and on the facades of the Skopia Gallery and Mamco. Bart's 'Suspens at Geneva' is a series of tinted screens hung from wires. This ethereal display invites viewers to see space and light differently thanks to a shifting multicolor environment that changes with their every step.
For the spring 2012 sequence of the exhibition cycle the Éternel Détour (Eternal Detour), Mamco is pleased to present solo shows devoted to two artists, Thomas Huber (born in 1955 in Zurich), a painter who already exhibited at the museum in 1999; and Cécile Bart (born in 1958 in Dijon), who took part in L’Hypothèse du tableau volé (The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting), which was featured at Mamco in 1998. Arranged chronologically, the exhibition Vous êtes ici features just under three hundred paintings. Huber’s project aims to recreate as faithfully as possible thirty-six groups of works,including “Discours sur le déluge” (The Flood Speech), “Discours à l’école” (Speech at School), “La fête des noces” (The Wedding Party), “Eau, sel et tableaux” (Water, Salt and Paintings), “Le soir” (The evening), “Sonnez les matines” (Morning Bells Are Ringing), “La bibliothèque” (The Library), “Les tableaux dorment” (The Paintings Are Sleeping), “Le rêve de Jacob” (Jacob’s Dream), and “Sauve qui peut” (Abandon Ship). Divided among some forty galleries on all four of the museum’s levels, these pictorial “groups” are displayed as the artist designed, planned and created them to be shown, along with their accompanying collections of sketches, plans, scale models and occasionally texts or speeches.
With Vous êtes ici, painting is also on display outside in the city. Five large billboards, the kind seen at construction sites detailing the future building project, have been installed in The quartier des Bains and Les Acacias neighborhood, on the Plainpalais plain, and on the façades of the Skopia Gallery and Mamco. These billboards, which were previously done in another form, notably in Munster, depict the city of Geneva, specifically the place where they are standing, though the site has been transformed by the painter’s eye.
“In my imagination I see us throwing open the shut gates of the paintings and bringing out the spaces that are hidden behind them, as if we could transport the paintings from the museum to the streets. We take the pictures down and carry them into the city. We hold them high, so that they can be seen by one and all.” (Thomas Huber)
A respected name on the international art scene since the mid-1980s, this Swiss artist creates with brushes and pigments a contemporary architectural space of the imagination. Displaying the influence of metaphysical painting, Huber’s pictures are striking for their large dimensions and range of colors and shapes. Through the precision of their line and the work done on perspective, they look realistic while making the occasional reference to an imaginary city called Huber-ville. Thresholds, veritable doors opening on a world that begs to be discovered, the canvases invite viewers to enter spaces that are generally deserted.“I’m always putting things in order here. I consider the order of a painting to be indispensable. You could easily name me superintendent of the pictorial space! Paintings must be clean and tidy. I sweep up twice a day, there’s nothing worse than dirty areas in a painting. I also loathe stuffy pictorial spaces, which is why I always thoroughly air things out. Moreover, I’m at ease in paintings, I always have something to do. Only occasionally do I get a little lonely here.” (Thomas Huber) Huber’s art is deeply bound up with writing and language, and the artist conveys the origins of a piece via speech. As both the architect of his paintings and a film director-illusionist, he offers a total art that goes beyond painting and verges on installation. His texts and speeches combine fictional stories,autobiographical episodes, waking dreams, philosophical considerations, reflections on the role of art and the artist in the world today, funny anecdotes and ironic remarks, and through them he transmits a kind of “user’s manual,” seeking to improve painters’ artistic know-how and viewer’s reading know-how. Vous êtes ici features an accompanying publication entitled «Mesdames et Messieurs. Conférences 1982-2010». This collection brings together in French translation all of the speeches the artist has delivered in front of his paintings to date.
The museum is also pleased to present the French artist Cécile Bart’s Suspens at Geneva, a beautiful series of tinted screens hung from wires. First shown in 2009 at FRAC Bourgogne in Dijon, the show has been enlarged and is installed in Mamco’s Sculptures’ Plateau. This ethereal display invites viewers to see space and light differently thanks to a shifting multicolor environment that changes with their every step.“For me, the ideal viewer is the person who takes her time, finds a rhythm. Her view of the work of art is modified in the course of a ‘long-term’ walk around the show with ‘downtime’moments, times to readjust. It’s like a stakeout. You understand a site, you scatter, then you find things.” (Cécile Bart). The complex display devised by the artist features thirty-one peintures/écrans (paintings/screens), alkyd paintings done on terylene screens that present a pictorial ballet in three movements. Done in warm colors, “Les Volants” (The Flying Ones)dances a pas de deux with the gallery’s windows; the blues and greens of “Les Nageurs” (The Swimmers) conjure up a waterline; and finally “Les Acrobates” (The Acrobats), an alternating array of shadows and light, engages in a subtle game with the floor of the space. This multidirectional space plays with transparency and the shadows created by the painting, the traces left by the artist’s brush, and the intensity of the shifting light. Bart’s paintings/screens alter the atmosphere thanks to their floating colors. Without seeming so, they remain pictures hanging in a space.
Press Office - Sophie Eigenmann, s.eigenmann@mamco.ch, tél. + 41 22 320 61 22
Press conference : Thuesday 21st February, at 11 am
Show opening : Thuesday 21st February, starting at 6 pm
Thomas Huber¹s conference : Thuesday 3rd April, at 6:30 pm
Mamco | Musée d¹art moderne et contemporain
10 rue des Vieux-Grenadiers Genève
Open Thuesday through Friday from noon to 6 p.m., the first Wednesday of the month until 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays as well as Friday 6 April, Sunday 27 and Monday 28 May 2012.
Regular admission CHF 8, reduced admission CHF 6, group admission CHF 4