At the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, a participatory work for children

You don't know what to do this weekend with your children? What if you took them to Paris Museum of Modern Artnot only to see the works exhibited there but to participate in the crazy project of a contemporary artist? The latter is none other thanOliver Beer (born in 1985), British visual artist with a passion for music who completely captivated spectators at the Lyon Biennale this year. This time, the artist installed two production studios open to children (and only children!) in permanent collections.

The first takes the form of a huge drawing tableon which little budding artists can set up to reproduce in their own way four paintings of the museum's collections, all having a more or less direct link with music and signed Sonia Delaunay (Pace1938), Georges Rouault (Bust of singer facing1902–1914), Victor Brauner (Stereofigure1959) et Nina Childress (Sylvie (big head)2018). The second is populated by dozens of microphonesin which children can describe the works et what they feel facing them.

Four films compiling children's drawings

Accessible every Saturday and Sunday free access until January 12, these two studios will allow the artist to collect hundreds of visual and sound feelingsthen to realize four films – one per work – compiling the drawings at a time (at a rate of twelve per second, to create a cartoon effect !) and the toddlers’ reactions. These films will be visible a little later in the yearfrom April 4 to July 13, 2025, also freely accessible in the permanent collections.

“The works,” explains the artist, “are part of a shared human history that the museum has chosen to preserve in its collections; their reinterpretation by children is a new way of perceiving these paintings. » Trained in musical composition, graduated from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford and from the Sorbonne in cinematographic theory, Oliver Beer here approaches the paintings carefully preserved by the museum as living scoresjust waiting to be interpreted (or played) by young children.

A generous experience

The reflection is generous, because it places the works in a continuous history, in a movement, which brings them down from their somewhat frozen pedestal and makes them dancethat of exchange, sensitivity, sharing through the ages. She invites children not to feel intimidated by artistic geniuses, but on the contrary to consider them as vectors of inspiration, creation – of life, in short!

Want to see more? Oliver Beer's work can currently be seen in two other exhibition spaces in France: at the Lyon Biennale therefore, he shows the Grandes Locos his astonishing project between opera, plastic installation and video (Resonance Project: The Cave2024), for which he invited different musicians in a decorated cave dating from the Paleolithicwhere they sing a cappella nursery rhymes and childhood songs. In Nantes, the Unique Place presents its Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me) I & II (2018), video in which two singers kissusing the other's mouth as a sounding board…