: Doc Levin / Jeanne Triboul : Doc Levin CONSTRUCTED WORLDS A CHOICE OF SCULPTURES FROM THE CENTRE POMPIDOU 22.11.19 23.08.21 centrepompidou-metz.fr MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP Design graphique Pompidou, - Centre (Adagp) © Georges Meguerditchian - All rights reserved © Succession Brancusi Paris Musée national d’art Moderne, Pompidou, , avant 1928. Centre #mondesconstruits La Colonne sans fin III Constantin Brancusi, Constantin Brancusi, CONSTRUCTED WORLDS A CHOICE OF SCULPTURES FROM THE CENTRE POMPIDOU CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................5 2. EXHIBITION ITINERARY ......................................................................8 3. FIVE QUESTIONS TO BERNARD BLISTÈNE, EXHIBITION CURATOR ...23 4. LIST OF ARTISTS ..............................................................................25 5. RELATED EVENTS .............................................................................26 6. EXHIBITION PARTNERS ....................................................................29 7. IMAGES AVAILABLE TO THE PRESS .................................................31 CONSTRUCTED WORLDS A CHOICE OF SCULPTURES FROM THE CENTRE POMPIDOU Brancusi, accroupi, taillant à la hache une Colonne sans fin, vers 1924 - 1925 Épreuve gélatino-argentique, 23,9 x 29,7 cm © Georges Meguerditchian - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP 4 CONSTRUCTED WORLDS A CHOICE OF SCULPTURES FROM THE CENTRE POMPIDOU 1. INTRODUCTION CONSTRUCTED WORLDS A CHOICE OF SCULPTURES FROM THE CENTRE POMPIDOU FROM NOVEMBER 22, 2019 TO AUGUST 23, 2021 GALERIE 1 As early as the beginning of the 20th century, a materials and above all to space, clearly structured, large part of modern sculpture marked a radical even modular and dynamic, involving the spectator. shift away from tradition, by following the route Modernist artists wanted a transparency and a of abstraction. Paradoxically this was a way balance for their sculptures that they wanted to of analysing the world in a more objective and see transposed into human structures. The most universal manner: rather than modelling the surface important pieces which are assembled here from of things, certain artists like the cubists wanted to the Centre Pompidou call into question the spawning reveal their essential structure. They divided up the of this utopian abstraction, followed by the analysis objects they studied into lines, volumes and planes. of it and finally, its contemporary deconstruction. In their wake, sculptors and diverse avant- gardists baptised their works “constructions” or Curators: Bernard Blistène, Director of the Musée “structures”, opting for a radical abstraction, where national d’art moderne, with Jean-Marie Gallais, lines and right angles predominated. If industrial Head of the Programming department, Centre architecture encouraged these tendencies known Pompidou-Metz and Hélène Meisel, research and as “constructivist”, occasionally willing to produce exhibition manager. functional objects, sculpture also looked to redefine what is unique to it: the relationship to gesture, to 5 CONSTRUCTED WORLDS A CHOICE OF SCULPTURES FROM THE CENTRE POMPIDOU 2. EXHIBITION ITINERARY Constructed Worlds, in the continuity of Phares, the simulated collapsings by Monika Sosnowska Musicircus and The Adventure of Colour, offers a (Rubble, 2008). Ceasing to be an object, sculpture thematic voyage over a long period, of the collection topples over into the “extended field” which the art of the Centre Pompidou - Musée national d’art historian Rosalind Krauss once described, to become moderne at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. Through a structure, an installation, an environment, a site, around fifty works, from Constantin Brancusi and a performance… Alberto Giacometti to Bruce Nauman, Rasheed From the very beginning of the exhibition, the huge Araeen and Rachel Whiteread, this fourth part, timber carved by Joseph Beuys into the barely accompanied by a mediation through images, squared trunk of a tree and laid out on the ground like explores the sculptural research carried out by a sarcophagus, embodies the anonymous archaism artists from the beginning of the XXth century up of votive objects (Nasse Wäsche Jungfrau II, 1985). until today. In the same vein, the monoliths assembled by Ulrich Without following a strictly chronological order, Rückriem suggest the art of stone masons, going the exhibition layout approaches some of the from megalithic alignments to builders of cathedrals fundamental problems of sculpture, by thwarting (Dolomit, 1982). The direct size of the raw materials the presupposed classics: the placing of the gesture, presents as a starting point, a primordial gesture, the presence, absence or integration of the pedestal, doing away with superfluous transformations, in the invention and reinvention of sculpture beyond order to serve a sacred purpose. Further along, the statuary, of volume, gravitas or immobility. Robert Smithson's structures (Mirror vortex, 1964), The diversity of works and of currents represented Donald Judd (Untitled, 1978) and Gerhard Richter (6 in this exhibition navigates through possible stehende Scheiben, 2002/2011) on the contrary show “configurations” of a medium which is sometimes a perfectly industrial manufactured workmanship, pushed back to its outer reaches: graphic sculpture, of glass surfaces, metal or plexiglass without on the borderline of drawing, with the welded any faults. Just as anonymous, these minimalist silhouettes by Julio González (Femme à la corbeille, sculptures seem to be prototypes coming out of 1934) ; the sculpture “aboveground” and dynamic a factory, produced by machines rather than by with the mobiles by Alexander Calder (Fish Bones hand: objects without gestures, heralding other 1939) ; sculpture on the borderline of architecture venerations (technological, mercantile?). with the Architectones by Kasimir Malévitch (Gota, The paradoxes which punctuate this exhibition offer 1923 / 1989), the monumental impressions by Rachel a contrasted rereading of a slice of the history of Whiteread (Untitled (Room 101) 2003) ; or even sculpture from the 20th and 21st centuries, starting the sculpture on the point of disappearing with 6 CONSTRUCTED WORLDS A CHOICE OF SCULPTURES FROM THE CENTRE POMPIDOU from the history of forms, revealing lines of descent As an introduction and conclusion to this exhibition just as much as fertile dissensions. In the room layout, the artist Falke Pisano born in Amsterdam devoted to the celebrated aesthetic duel opposing in 1979) has been invited to conceive an original verticality and horizontality, cohabiting as such installation, conceptualised as a " little history of in an exceptional manner the Colonne sans fin by modern sculpture". Since the middle of the first Constantin Brancusi, and the metallic expanding decade of this century, Falke Pisano questioned the netting on the ground by Carl Andre (4 Segment paradoxes of modern and contemporary sculpture: Hexagon, 1974). A great admirer of Brancusi – can a sculpture be at one and the same time “(before him) verticality was always determined: abstract and concrete? Can a sculpture become a the top of the head and the soles of the feet were the conversation? The artist's texts and conferences limits of sculpture. Brancusi's sculpture exceeds its develop the issues which are dear to her - language, vertical limits and continues beyond its terrestrial the body, and context. This research is then limits" – Carl Andre would nonetheless decide to spatialised and divided into mechanisms capable bring down the Colonne sans fin, by adopting an of accommodating works, diagrams, posters and overt horizontality. The exhibition plays on these projections as well as performances. tensions which constantly redefine modern and contemporary sculpture. André Cadere A Romanian artist born in Poland, André Cadere settled in Paris in 1967. In 1970, he abandoned abstract painting in order to devote himself to the production of “bars of round wood” composed of coloured segments. Of variable sizes and thicknesses, they could fit into a pocket or reach two metres high. Three to seven colours were aligned according to a mathematical system of permutations into which an error always slipped in. Being able to be placed, hung or moved around in the manner of a pilgrim’s rod, Cadere’s bars defied hierarchies: without neither back nor front, without neither height nor depth, the artist often introduced them into institutions without having been invited. André Cadere, Six barres de bois rond, 1975 12 cylindres de bois peint pour chaque barre. H.: 115 diam. 9,5 (chaque) The six roundwood bars were scattered Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art Moderne, Paris throughout the exhibition area. © Courtesy Succession André Cadere © Philippe Migeat - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP 7 CONSTRUCTED WORLDS A CHOICE OF SCULPTURES FROM THE CENTRE POMPIDOU ROOM 1 UNBOXING Rhetoric, diagrams or structures: since the middle Some questions to Falke Pisano, September 2019 of the first decade of the century, Falke Pisano has created systems likely to solve the mystery of Centre Pompidou-Metz: The history of sculpture modernist sculpture. Because of its abstraction, is central in your work, yet one could say that it can indeed seem to be an inscrutable enigma, it is language and discourse that are your main a purely formal game, indifferent to the course of material. How do the two articulate (sculpture and things. It is, however, always the fruit of a personal