calendario eventi  :: 

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13/9/2006

Exhibitions

Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Five billion years
Session, from September 14 until December 31 2006

Is there a fixed point in the universe?
Five billion years ago, the universe began an accelerated expansion. Astronomers hypothesize that a force called "dark energy" dominated the gravity of matter and caused the universe to stop slowing down and to begin a never-ending growth spurt. With this dramatic shift, the universe launched into a state of perpetual movement. Always in flux, reality loses its ability to appear as a series of fixed reference points or as a web of consistent and reliable connections. Instead, the elusive nature of speed and time penetrates our awareness of the world and compromises the comfort of stability. In a similar way, art eludes fixed positions or places and instead glides over the visible and reveals the many layers that serve in its construction. Art can make reality denser, and can make it accelerate.

FIVE BILLION YEARS is the first of three chapters of a year-long program at the Palais de Tokyo. It begins a reflection not on the exhibition as a singular event - a fixed point that is isolated in time and space - but on the very notion of a program, an experience with a temporal cursor that is constantly in motion, in permanent fluctuation. As the beginning and first segment of a new program that will feature exhibitions and events over the next 12 months, FIVE BILLION YEARS builds on the Palais de Tokyo’s commitment to artists working today by embodying the uncontainable and elastic nature of contemporary art.

The rapidly expanding artistic field that is FIVE BILLION YEARS spreads throughout the Palais de Tokyo’s exhibition spaces. Incorporating both solo and group shows, FIVE BILLION YEARS also includes a multitude of events, including an international competition of chainsaw sculpture, a lecture by an astrophysicist and a music therapist, and a ballet for mini-motorcycles.

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5'000'000'000 YEARS
from September 14 until December 31 2006

5,000,000,000 YEARS is an exhibition that places itself within the FIVE BILLION YEARS chapter by way of a mutation. Synonymous yet clearly dissimilar, the exhibition and the program-chapter that contains it create an endless feedback loop, each one mutating as it transfers back into the other.

Like mutants, artists operate in parallel spheres, and like a mutant, art survives by being furtive and by compromising our ability to establish clear interpretive sign-posts. Visually, nothing (or almost nothing) allows one to distinguish a mutant from a human being, and nothing (or almost nothing) allows one to distinguish a work of art from an ordinary object. The difference lies elsewhere. But as soon as a mutant is identified as such, he returns—we see it happen—to his original status of being an extraterrestrial. As soon as a work of art is identified as such, it loses its status as an object only to be transfigured and returned to the world of art.

This chronic schizophrenia is a defining characteristic of art-making today. What counts is not the colonization of new worlds but an accumulation of the identical. Art doesn’t invade or abandon one territory at the expense or in favor of another, but it constantly slides in and out of territories and across different spheres and personalities.

Today, ontology seems less relevant than the mechanics of contamination. In a universe that is expanding at an irreversibly accelerated rate, the borders that define a work of art can only be blurry. More crucial are the ways in which the work moves back and forth between spheres of knowledge and practice, effectively becoming an uncontainable mutant. The exhibition 5,000,000,000 YEARS explores this elasticity of the work of art, its temporality and impact.

Like mutants, some pieces featured in 5,000,000,000 YEARS have already been seen in other venues, notably at SI, New York, as part of the exhibitions FIVE BILLION YEARS (2004), OK / OKAY (2005) and SPACE BOOMERANG (2006). These works fit into a schizophrenia that emphasizes their ability to change according to context and their potential for generating multiple meanings: can a work of art that is displayed in two different venues remain identical? What is the principle guiding its mutation? What is the principle behind its autonomy?

Christian Andersson / Michel Blazy / Mike Bouchet / Loris Cecchini / Philippe Decrauzat / Marcel Duchamp / Ceal Floyer / Urs Fischer / Mark Handforth / Joachim Koester / Vincent Lamouroux / Lang-Baumann / Tony Matelli / Jonathan Monk / Francois Morellet / Gianni Motti / Charles Ray

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ONE SECOND ONE YEAR
from September 14 until December 31 2006

Featuring works that are randomly activated, ONE SECOND ONE YEAR is an exhibition put on pause or in fast-forward. It is impossible to determine the exact moment any of the pieces might (or might not) take place. ONE SECOND ONE YEAR creates an experience of suspense, and perhaps of frustration, endlessly moving back and forth between the two. The temporality of the work of art becomes elastic and operates without any possible prediction.

Like any other exhibition, ONE SECOND ONE YEAR allows viewers to experience each one of the works included and it will remain on view until all works have taken place. Some pieces will become "visible" several times a day while others only once, such as the famous work by Alighiero e Boetti, a box containing a light bulb that only lights up once a year. Works that might not have been activated during the show’s official dates will be placed like parasites throughout the Palais de Tokyo until the moment they occur.

Alighiero Boetti / Francois Curlet / Lara Favaretto / Graham Gussin / Leopold Kessler / Kristof Kintera / Jonathan Monk / Fernando Ortega / Werner Reiterer / Roman Signer / Kris Vleeschouwer

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RENAUD AUGUSTE DORMEUIL
from September 14 until October 29 2006

For The Day Before, Auguste-Dormeuil creates sky maps for each day that precedes certain well-known military bombings, including Guernica (April 25, 1937), Hiroshima (August 5, 1945), Nagasaki (August 8, 1945), Sarajevo (August 28, 1994), or Baghdad (January 15, 1991), etc. A pause before the catastrophe, each photograph witnesses a moment when everything is still possible and yet the future already seems decided.

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ZILVINAS KEMPINAS
from September 14 until December 31 2006

In this installation by Lithuanian artist Zilvinas Kempinas, a series of fans enable a strip of video tape to levitate in the exhibition space. An inanimate object comes to life and becomes a fleeting form, floating against the wall in random patterns.

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FABIEN GIRAUD
from September 14 until October 29 2006

This kinetic sculpture is made of several mini-motorcycles in a row that start up and rev their
engines. Synchronizing their movement and harmonizing their sound, the bikes rise up together on their rear wheels in a series of wheelies.

Palais de Tokyo
13, avenue du President Wilson - Paris

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