A banana taped to the wall or an entire part of André Breton’s workshop: a gigantic exhibition brings the collection of the Center Pompidou in Paris to dialogue with nearly 400 works by Maurizio Cattelan at the Center Pompidou-Metz, which celebrates its 15th anniversary.
The title of the exhibition, “endless Sunday”, was chosen by artist Maurizio Cattelan. “For an Italian, +without end, it is a declaration of love”, deciphers Chiara Parisi, director of the Center Pompidou-Metz, also from the peninsula.
The idea is also that the visitor immerses himself, in peace “like a Sunday” in this exhibition “Out of norme”, which has taken up residence everywhere in the Messin Museum.
At 64, the iconoclastic and provocative plastic artist Maurizio Cattelan, who has already exhibited in Metz, was invited to select the works of the Parisian Pompidou who must dialogue with his.
From the entrance to the museum, the very large work “Love” (2010) of the Italian artist, representing a hand with all the cut fingers except the middle finger, attracts the eye.
The first room of the visit is just as grand: “Felix” (2001), a gigantic cat skeleton, which he made on the scale of a dinosaur, appears from the entrance.
– “labyrinth” –
Around these large facilities, “masterpieces” leaving “extremely rarely the Center Pompidou walls” in Paris like “Le Bal Bullier” painted by Sonia Delaunay in 1913, or a section of the extraordinary workshop by André Breton.
The visitor can also discover emblematic works such as “The Mother of the Artist” (1951) by Alberto Giacometti or “Le Grand Nu” (1908) by Georges Braque.
In another room, the chessboard of Marcel Duchamp, who recently joined the Center Pompidou collection, dialogue with the contemporary version of the chessboard of Maurizio Cattelan, “Good Versus Evil” (2003).
The exhibition is built around a 27 -letters abécédaire (with the “A” for “Family Air” or the “R” to “Recall the bodies”). Each letter, plus a corresponding to “Sunday”, represents a space of the exhibition … all out of order.
The texts corresponding to these 27 concepts carry an embodied speech, that of Maurizio Cattelan and prisoners of the prison for women from Giudecca to Venice.
– “Facond dialogue” with Paris –
The exhibition is presented just before closing for work at the Center Pompidou in Paris, in September, until 2030 for a “metamorphosis”.
With the closure of the Parisian museum, “there is a real exchange of public that will arrive”, and a whole “series of partnerships” was created so that works travel to France and particularly in Metz, where Chiara Parisi expects an arrival of Parisians but also Europeans to discover them elsewhere than in Beaubourg.
Another wink, a “sculpture garden” germinated on the second floor of Pompidou-Metz, with works by Henri Laurens (1885-1954) usually presented on the terrace of the fifth floor of the Parisian museum.
The exhibition “Surveillance without end. Maurizio Cattelan and the collection of the Center Pompidou” will be visible for almost two years, until February 2, 2027. But “dynamic”, she will see her works renewing herself over time, slides Chiara Parisi.
The opening of the exhibition also marks the anniversary of the Messin Museum, inaugurated in May 2015, with its roof in the shape of a Chinese hat. With more than five million visitors since that date, the museum is one of the most visited in France outside Paris.
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