calendario eventi  :: 

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7/10/2014

Two exhibitions

Centre Pompidou, Paris

Frank Gehry

For the first time in Europe, the Centre Pompidou is to present a comprehensive retrospective of the work of Frank Gehry, one of the great figures of contemporary architecture.

Known all over the world for his buildings, many of which have attained iconic status, Frank Gehry has revolutionised architecture’s aesthetics, its social and cultural role, and its relationship to the city.

It was in Los Angeles, in the early 1960s, that Gehry opened his own office as an architect. There he engaged with the California art scene, becoming friends with artists such as Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Claes Oldenburg, Larry Bell, and Ron Davis. His encounter with the works of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns would open the way to a transformation of his practice as an architect, for which his own, now world-famous, house at Santa Monica would serve as a manifesto.

Frank Gehry’s work has since then been based on the interrogation of architecture’s means of expression, a process that has brought with it new methods of design and a new approach to materials, with for example the use of such “poor” materials as cardboard, sheet steel and industrial wire mesh.

As postmodernisms triumphed, Gehry for his part escaped them. He explained himself in a now famous dialogue with director Sydney Pollack who made a biographical film about the architect in 2005 (Sketches of Frank Gehry – screened as part of the exhibition). “How do you make architecture human?” ; “How do you find a second wind after industrial collapse?”. Such questions run through Gehry’s work, through both the architecture and the urban vision so intimately associated with it. He is indeed as much an urbanist as he is an architect, the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, offering one of the most spectacular demonstrations of this – an iconic example of architecture’s capacity to revive the surrounding economic fabric.

Following an earlier presentation of Frank Gehry’s work at the Centre Pompidou in 1992, this retrospective offers a global survey of his work. It describes the development of his formal and architectural language through the different periods into which his career may be divided, from the 1960s to the present. This is done through some 60 major projects, among them the Vitra Design Museum in Germany (1989), the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997), the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) and the Beekman Tower in New York (2011).

No other exhibition has ever assembled so many projects – with 225 drawings, 67 models and supporting documentation – to offer a reading of this highly distinctive architectural language. Elaborated in close co-operation with Frank Gehry Partners, the design of the exhibition is organised around two key themes: urbanism and the development of new systems of digital design and fabrication. The exhibition opens at a time when Frank Gehry has been very active in France. After building the American Center in Paris in the 1990s, he has returned in force with two major projects: a start was made on the Fondation Luma at Arles only a few months ago, while the end of October will see the opening of his most recent building, the masterly Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

To accompany the exhibition, Éditions du Centre Pompidou will publish an exhaustive, 260-page catalogue, edited by curators Frédéric Migayrou and Aurélien Lemonier, the most authoritative work on Gehry yet to be published in French. With an exclusive interview with Frank Gehry and essays by art historians and architectural critics Marie-Ange Brayer, Gwenaël Delhumeau, Eliza Culea and Andrew Witt - its 600 illustrations present 60 of Gehry’s most outstanding projects, built or unbuilt, through sketches, drawings, plans, elevations and photographs.

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Latifa Echakhch

From 8 October 2014 to 26 January 2015, the Centre Pompidou is presenting a work by Latifa Echakhch, winner of the 2013 Prix Marcel Duchamp, in Espace 315.

Latifa Echakhch has devised a specific project for the Centre Pompidou, which follows on from other exhibitions: «Latifa Echakhch. Goodbye Horses» at the Kunsthaus Zurich in 2011, «The scene takes place» at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery in 2013, and «All around fades to a heavy sound» at the kamel mennour gallery this year. In all these exhibitions, Latifa Echakhch explored an idea where circuses and shows become ghostly spectacles emptied of public and performers following «nobody knows» what kind of events or disasters.

With Espace 315, the artist once more places ideas about the stage, decorum and traces at the heart of her approach. The exhibition, consisting of several sculptural components, has a strongly unified feel. The artist seeks to build up a dramatic scene. By making play with the backstage area, the whole work suggests a wide range of meanings and interpretations ranging from a disappointing materiality to images of mental landscapes. Latifa Echakhch transforms the venue into a dense, dreamlike place halfway between earth and sky, frozen in a twilight world.
As they move around, visitors discover different fragments of history, objects that are almost derisory, and recollections of childhood drawn from the very depths of memory, then immersed in black ink.

«The jury were impressed by the way Latifa Echakhch brings out all the potential of the space she fills by using easily recognisable elements,» says jury president Alfred Pacquement. «Her work, halfway between Surrealism and Conceptualism, poses succinct, precise questions on the importance of symbols, and conveys the fragility of modernism. The artist does not force a specific reading of her works on the viewer: she leaves their meaning open, free from any dogmatism.»

The artist was acclaimed for her work as a whole, presented to the jury of the Prix Marcel Duchamp by her reporter, Rein Wolfs, director of the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn. She follows on from the two-man team of Dewar & Gicquel, winners of the 2012 Prix Marcel Duchamp 2012.

Latifa Echakhch is represented by various galleries: kamel mennour in Paris, kaufmann repetto in Milan, the Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv, and the Eva Presenhuber Gallery in Zurich.

LATIFA ECHAKHCH BY REIN WOLFS

Her works are often charged with hidden political meanings, whether historical or topical. From time to time, her Moroccan origins play a role but generally this is quite a limited one. Although Latifa Echakhch was born in 1974 at El Khnansa, in Morocco, she grew up in the French Alps. After a long stay in Paris, she lives and works once again in the alpine region and for several years now – but this time on the Swiss side.
Political meanings often appear within her work when, for instance, she is confronted from a poetic and dreamy viewpoint with the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Or even at the Venice Biennial where she simulates the struggle for national identity in the national pavilions with a forest of masts without flags (Fantasia [Empty Flag], 2011). Or finally when, under the title For Each Stencil A Revolution (2007), she covers the walls of an exhibition space by upholstering them entirely with carbon paper, letting the blue colours from the carbon paper trickle towards the ground thanks to the use of an aggressive solvent. Here, Echakhch combines Yves Klein’s blue revolution with the historical value of tracts calling for political upheaval. Echakhch links various sensorial experiences together in a synesthesia-like manner by placing them within a romantic and surrealist tradition. The music is suggested by way of a scale engendered by means of systems hanging different images at different heights, like a partition (Morgenlied, 2012); the numbering of innumerable resolutions by the United Nations Security Council is diverted from its primary mission by a musician, following the technique of the twelve tones elaborated by Schönberg in a composition for piano enveloping the space (Résolutions, 2009 – work in progress). Echakhch’s manner of working is associativo-reasoned and poetico-disquieting. As soon as unreserved beauty seems to impose itself everywhere, a disruptive element is incorporated; and when a system risks becoming easily predictable, she introduces a strategy into the game allowing her to counteract it. In this way, she always forcefully stamps her art with the imprint of her obstinacy, thereby inciting a watchful acceptance. Latifa Echakhch’s art is simply precise and segmented, minimal and emotional, aesthetic and profound.
With her precise and minimal works, Latifa Echakhch constructs meaningful associations.
In her exhibition praxis, most of the time Latifa Echakhch conceives the museum space in its globality, like a block which she can either invest with a large installation work where each element is interdependent, or transform a singular narration through gestures as personal as they are precise. Often starting from a minimal layout and the simplest materials, she succeeds in arranging works within the space whose formal power is not encumbered with human or poetic, emotional or political, historical or intercultural benchmarks. On the contrary, a real appreciation of interpretations and associations emerges by connecting the pieces of an exhibition together in different manners.

Image: Latifa Echakhch, Chapeau d’encre, 2011. Hat, resin and indian ink. Variable dimensions. Views of the exhibition « Von Schwelle zu Schwelle », Museum Haus Esters, Kunstmuseen, Krefeld, 2011 © Latifa Echakhch © Photo. Volker Döhne. Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris

communications and partnerships departement
75191 Paris cedex 04
Director
Benoit Parayre
Telephone
00 33 (0)1 44 78 12 87
Email
benoit.parayre@centrepompidou.fr

press officer
Dorothée Mireux
telephone
00 33 (0)1 44 78 46 60
e-mail
dorothee.mireux@centrepompidou.fr

Press attaché
Anne-Marie Pereira
Telephone
00 33 (0)1 44 78 40 69
Email
anne-marie.pereira@centrepompidou.fr

Centre Pompidou
75191 Paris cedex 04
Opening hours
Exhibition open every day
from 11 am to 9 pm except Thuesdays
Tarif
11 to 13 €, depending on the period
concessions : 9 to 10 €
Valid on day of issue for the musée national d’art moderne and all exhibitions Free admissions for Centre Pompidou members (annual pass holders)

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