The New Festival

ESPACE 315

Sophie Perez and Xavier Boussiron, Beaubourg-la-Reine (2009)
This monumental sculpture takes the form of an enormous commedia dell'arte mask whose botched features do not detract from its symbolic power. More fossil cranium than decorative object, it stands, say the artists, for the missing link in the Darwinian evolution of the human imagination. To exhibit as a work of art the natural object that is the human being in its expressive capacities is the goal of the Compagnie du Zerep and its invited guests, who will inaugurate Beaubourg-la-Reine with performances of every kind.


GALERIE SUD

Carsten Höller, Mirror Carousel (2005)
Entirely covered in mirror, this carousel turns slowly and without end. Too slow to provide any fun, it has to be for something else – a disturbance of cognitive process characteristic of an artist who, as is his wont, elegantly disrupts our apprehension of the space invested by his works.

Jorge Pardo, Untitled (Light House), 2002.
Fonds National d'Art Contemporain
Jorge Pardo plays on the conventional limits of sculpture, where it verges on architecture and design. Untitled (Light House) is a tunnel-like corridor within which visitors will find a space for rest and conversation. A discreet comment on human beings' relationship to their environment, this hybrid, enigmatic, fragile space is a sensual experience to be explored from within.

Manfred Pernice, Haldensleben 05-07 (2005-2007)
Is it a sculpture? An architectural model? A dwelling? Pernice leaves us wondering with his curious constructions, platforms, plinths or shelters, hardly finished and barely solid. This accessible, habitable structure also offers a unique view on the exhibition. Haldensleben is the name of a small town, the most important German producer of crockery – often used by the artist, as visitors will see here upon entering the work.

Olivier Vadrot & Cocktail Designers Kiosque électronique (2004)
Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain d'Ile-de-France.
A contemporary version of the bandstand, this glass box is intended as a nomadic concert stage. Musicians regularly perform in it, but apparently in silence, their physical activity thus taking on its full visual potential. The sound is available only via headsets connected to the box. Musicians from five experimental electronic music labels will provide a daily concert throughout the festival period.

Heimo Zobernig, Franz West, Zlatan Vukosavljevic, Studiolo (2005)
This installation is inspired by the papal studium and the Renaissance studiolo – the aristocratic study devoted to scholarship and the collection of curiosities. Inside it, the visitor may sit on a chair at a table and select the ambient colour by means of a controller. From the surface of the table emerges a rubber glove: alternately inflating and deflating, it symbolizes the passage of time. Beneath the table, a pipe serves as an "energy collector."

Pierre Leguillon, Teatrino Palermo
At various locations around the Centre artist-curator Pierre Leguillon proposes a series of brief interventions by invited artists, taking as their point of departure Clément Rodzielski's replica of the Puppet Theatre for Iris Jasmin by Blinky Palermo (1943-1977), which he reproduces in grey tones, like "a photocopy of the original."

Franck Leibovici, Nos secrets en alcôves (2009)
A collection of floating utterances scattered in documents and broadcast across the space, sung by an amateur choir and recycled by guest artists, Nos secrets en alcôves is the outcome of Franck Leibovici's research at the Centre Pompidou. The fragments of speech he collected offer a poetical and ethnographical self-portrait of the institution.


FORUM AND MEZZANINE

Tobias Rehberger, (2002)
Centre Pompidou-Musée National d'Art Moderne.
This monumental work consists of an arrangement of lamps whose brightness varies with the daylight, thus conjointly changing the appearance of the space in which it is installed. The notions of communication and interactivity are central to Rehberger's creative process, and the work can thus be read as much in terms of phenomenology as in terms of design.

Davide Balula, Amulette de protection magnétique (Amulet the Magnet) (2007)
Balula's highly diverse work draws on sound, time and the world of science. The wall-paper motif here comes from a Japanese cult called the Pana-Wave Laboratory which came to media attention in the early years of the decade, for whom the diagram offers protection against the harmful effects of all-pervasive electromagnetic radiation.

Andrea Blum, In a bed with a cold-blooded animal (2008)
Blum's art speaks of the complexity and confusion of the world, of misunderstandings and failures of communication. In this room, the occupant of a daybed shares the functional, library-like environment with a lizard – a cold, silent and passive companion. The artist creates psychosocial relationships that find expression in the architecture of objects.

Ben Kinmont, On becoming something else (2009)
This project by Ben Kinmont is a culinary collaboration on the idea of the recipe as representation, first put forward by the critic Félix Fénéon (1861-1944). Seven Parisian chefs have been given a text describing the life of an artist who eventually abandons art to "become something else." It is this transition that each chef is to represent in a dish to appear on the menu during the festival. The project is represented at the Centre Pompidou by a vitrine and accompanying documentation, which will direct visitors to participating restaurants.

Olivier Bardin, Exhibition Continues (2009)
For Bardin, the exhibition is itself a medium, in which he explores the way that identity is constructed through our representations of ourselves and of others. At the entrance to the Centre Pompidou, visitors will find a number of seats they can occupy. As in the theatre, the seated audience can watch the new arrivals, and for the latter, those already seated become the sight to be seen. A continuous performance whose cast is drawn, spontaneously, from the flow of visitors.


FORUM BAS

Vincent Lamouroux, Sol.07 (2008-2009)
A commission by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication – Centre National des Arts Plastiques, with the support of the Ricard Foundation in partnership with Plysorol and Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois.
Vincent Lamouroux's Sols are walkable plywood sculptures, installed in a variety of spaces, inspired by the remodelling of nature by man for the sake of sport or visual pleasure. The space finds itself remade and made over to the visitor and to the choreographers who will make use of it in the context of the Vidéodanse programme.