The Luma Foundation in Arles presents around ten projects, offering a multiple and spectacular vision of art.
More than ever, the Luma Foundation in Arles is the destination for contemporary art lovers, with a host of dizzying proposals. Between a descent on Carsten Höller’s slide, a break on the lawns or a drink in the shade of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s installation, the summer program alone can fill a day!
Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is rightly in the spotlight with the retrospective “A lot of people”. Faithful to Warhol’s thinking that anything well done can be considered art, the artist became known in the 1990s with culinary works. The exhibition is organized around installations that are at once political, living and participatory, questioning democracy, consumption, communication, protest movements by mobilizing aesthetics, ephemeral situations, art history, wok handling or the flavor of Turkish coffee. The subject is sometimes complex, but the hanging offers the visitor a proximity that allows them to enter into a relationship with “another notion of culture” wanted by the artist.
Participatory installations
More accessible is the proposal of the Dutch duo Drift, which invades the main gallery of the tower with two spectacular interactive installations. When the algorithm becomes a means of expression, the pixels become winks to the touches scattered by Van Gogh on his canvases… With Coded Naturea gigantic screen arouses wonder with an image generated according to the movements of visitors, evoking schools of fish or the flight of birds. In Murmuring mindsthe visitor walks among a swarm of rectangular blocks which move, envelop, follow, accompany the steps of the visitors.
Other proposals include filmmaker Joel Coen, co-director of his film Ethan de Fargo or of The Big Lebovskioffers a variation on the photographic work of Lee Friedlander. In a sober black and white, the images reveal the links that unite the looks, playing with mirror effects, reflections, fragmentations for a series of strange and offbeat stories.
The star curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist continues his exploration of the work of his elders by revisiting the career of Gustav Meztger, born in Nuremberg in 1926 and died in London in 2017. The exhibition offers a dizzying immersion into the heart of the artist’s archives, for a reflection on the place of images and the scars left by the dramas of the 20th century. His series Historic Photographs is particularly impressive, mobilizing the visitor’s body to rediscover tragic episodes. Thus, the curious must dive under a large blanket to rediscover by crawling the image of the Anchluss, Hitler’s invasion of Austria.
Historical artists
This tour offers to save the best for last, with two peaks to choose from. With Herstorymake way for the immense American artist Judy Chicago, a figure of feminism in the 1970s. A follower of Smoke Sculptures based on smoke bombs, the visual artist created a work especially for Arles for the opening. With great gentleness, the artist subverts the authoritarian codes of minimalism, offering them a new poetic dimension. This elegant lightness, fragile, attentive to humans and nature is found at the heart of the Feather Roominviting you to immerse yourself in the whiteness of a feather room.
The other monumental exhibition is dedicated to the South African William Kentridge, also known for his opera productions. And indeed, the visual artist masters space like few of his contemporaries. Over more than 30 meters, the joyfully macabre figures of More Sweetly Play the Dancealternating with the ghosts of African and Soviet history Oh To Belive in Another WorldCombining drawing, decor, sculpture, theatre and installation, William Kentridge takes the visitor on a journey through his world, where allusions to the great avant-gardes and political struggles for freedom are dizzyingly mixed.
