The exhibition of approximately 50 projects provides a comprehensive panorama of his practice and research which spread over the past 20 years. The show aims to emphasize the live and organic dimension of the artist's propositions. In Espace 315 a monumental installation by the artistic duo Daniel Dewar and Gregory Gicquel, winners of the 2012 Prix Marcel Duchamp.
Pierre Huyghe
The Centre Pompidou presents the first retrospective exhibition of the work of Pierre Huyghe
a major figure in the contemporary art scene both in France and internationally.
The exhibition of approximately fifty projects adopts a completely new approach to the artist’s work,
and provides a comprehensive panorama of his practice and research which spread over the past
twenty years. The show aims to emphasize the live and organic dimension of the artist’s
propositions, where the exhibition space is conceived as a world in itself, not orchestrated,
but living at its own pace.
Pierre Huyghe was, from the Nineties onwards, a key figure in redefining the status of the art work
and the exhibition format, sometimes joining them in the form of a diary, a journey to the Antarctic
or an annual calendar in the shape of a garden.
While presenting some of his most iconic works, such as Blanche Neige Lucie, No Ghost Just a Shell
and Streamside Day, the exhibition explores the recurrences and junctions that appear in certain
works, and shows how the artist seeks to invent «live situations» through which he strives
to intensify the presence and vitality of reality.
«I am interested in constructing situations that take place within reality [...] I focus on something
that is not played, but which exists in itself. I seek not to identify the relationship between subjects,
but to invent initial conditions that lead to permeability. What interests me is intensifying a presence,
giving it its own presentation, its own appearance and its own life, rather than subjecting it
to pre-established models.» Pierre Huyghe
Thus, for The Host and the Cloud, Pierre Huyghe summoned a number of witnesses to the deserted
Museum of Traditional Arts and Crafts to discover a number of events which took place during
Halloween, Valentines’ Day and Labour Day. He staged different situations such as a trial, hypnosis
sessions, choreographies and sexual acts. For Documenta 13 in Kassel, visitors accidentally discovered
his site, a built ecosystem where one could find a dog with a pink leg, an uprooted oak of Joseph Beuys
and a sculpture of a reclining naked woman whose head was obscured by a beehive. The exhibition space
in the South Gallery opens to the outer world as an outgrowth, where certain organic and climatic works
by the artist will exist.
With the artist’s participation, this presentation represents a stage in this singular body of work –
a first step towards a future permanent site of Pierre Huyghe’s concerns and obsessions,
based on the idea of constructing a self-generating world which varies in time and space,
indifferent to our presence.
The exhibition will travel to the Ludwig Museum of Cologne from April 11th to July 13th 2014
and to LACMA in Los Angeles from November 23rd 2014 to March 8th 2015.
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Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel
The hall. Prix Marcel Duchamp 2012
From 25 September 2013 to 6 January 2014, the Centre Pompidou is hosting an exhibition
in Espace 315 by the artistic duo Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel, winners of the 2012 Prix
Marcel Duchamp.
The event is being staged in partnership with ADIAF (association for the international
dissemination of French art) as part of the Prix Marcel Duchamp, awarded each year
to an innovative artist in the French scene.
Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel met in 1997 at the Fine Arts School in Rennes, and ever since
then have been developing a joint approach based on personal experimentation (often pushed
to the extreme) with traditional sculpture and craft materials, applied to various themes reflecting
their interests of the moment. The artistic core of their work thus lies in the worlds of music,
fashion, non-Western cultures, ornamentation processes and ideas of taste and beauty – with all
the relativism such notions imply. They have made a name both within and outside France through
monumental installations imbued with a touch of Pop, involving spectacular staging that often
tests the limits of the institution concerned.
For Espace 315, the duo have produced several large pieces using some of their favourite techniques:
tapestry, ceramics, direct carving and painting on silk. Entitled "The Hall", the installation
is designed to reflect the architectural features of Espace 315, prompting an encounter between
viewers’ bodies and these monumental works. Some are ornamented by motifs with a decidedly
puzzle-like character, chosen for both their plastic and symbolic qualities.
The exhibition is accompanied by an album with texts by Jean-Pierre Bordaz and Dorothée Dupuis.
The book, containing reproductions of previous works, will mainly focus on pieces produced for
the Prix Marcel Duchamp exhibition, with detailed views.
Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel (born respectively in 1976 in the Forest of Dean, UK, and in 1975
in Saint Brieuc, France) live and work in Paris. They are represented by the Loevenbruck gallery
in Paris, and the Graff Mourgue d’Algue Gallery in Geneva, Switzerland.
Founded in 1994 and chaired by Gilles Fuchs, the ADIAF (association for the international
dissemination of French art) is a group of 300 contemporary art collectors with an intense
commitment to the exploration of creativity in the French scene. Every year the Prix Marcel Duchamp,
created by the ADIAF in 2000, is awarded to one of four nominee artists, born or resident in France
and working in the plastic and visual arts : installation, video, painting, photography, sculpture
and so on.
In the space of thirteen years, it has acclaimed nearly sixty of the most innovative rising artists. It has been
supported from the start by a key partnership with the Centre Pompidou, and is now one of the most
prestigious prizes in the world of contemporary art.
Prix Marcel Duchamp winners
Thomas Hirschhorn (2000), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (2002), Mathieu Mercier (2003),
Carole Benzaken (2004), Claude Closky (2005), Philippe Mayaux (2006), Tatiana Trouvé (2007),
Laurent Grasso (2008), Saâdane Afif (2009), Cyprien Gaillard (2010), Mircea Cantor (2011),
Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel (2012).
The Prix Marcel Duchamp is supported by Lombard Odier, Sothys, Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès,
Artcurial, Inlex IP Expertise.
With the collaboration of CreativTV.
With the participation of The Loevenbruck gallery.
Image: Pierre Huyghe
Press contact
Françoise Pams tel 0033 (0)1 44781287 e-mail francoise.pams@centrepompidou.fr
Thomas Lozinski tel 0033 (0)1 44784856 e-mail thomas.lozinski@centrepompidou.fr
Adiaf press relation:
Caroline Crabbe tel 0033 (0)6 10193631 e-mail caroline.crabbe@wanadoo.fr
Centre Pompidou
75191 Paris cedex 04
Opening times:
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