The building, not the art, is the star at the Bourse de Commerce Pinault Collection. So here are a few photos of the inside of the dome, where a film loop is playing, followed by a small sample of the art.
When you enter the museum you find yourself in a beautiful round room where an odd film is running in a loop. In the film, set in the Atacama desert, a solar-powered robot rearranges glass balls around a human skeleton.
When you enter the museum you find yourself in a beautiful round room where an odd film is running in a loop. In the film, set in the Atacama desert, a solar-powered robot rearranges glass balls around a human skeleton.
When you enter the museum you find yourself in a beautiful round room where an odd film is running in a loop. In the film, set in the Atacama desert, a solar-powered robot rearranges glass balls around a human skeleton.
Pierre Hughe (b. 1962) explores our relationship to space, time, and memory, inventing new rituals in which reality serves as a point of departure for our own imaginary worlds.
He installed his open-air workshop in the arid expanse of Chile's Atacama Desert, where the most advanced observatories study planets located outside the Solar System and the forms of life they may host. Fascinated by the discovery of an unburied corpse lying on the ground at the edge of the infinity of the cosmos, the artist invented a ritual that is at once archaic and technological, in which solar-powered mechanical arms move around the skeleton in a choreography that is as slow and precise as an autopsy. They delicately handle glass balls and amulets, engaging in gestures of a metaphysical and funerary ceremony, asking us to meditate on humanity's place in a changing world governed by technology, the film's editing being constantly recomposed in real time by a machine-learning algorithm.
The thresholds between life and death, reality and fiction, body and landscape, past, present and future, night and day, light and shadow, earth and sky, and the human and the non-human are thus reenacted ad infinitum.
Pierre Hughe (b. 1962) explores our relationship to space, time, and memory, inventing new rituals in which reality serves as a point of departure for our own imaginary worlds.
He installed his open-air workshop in the arid expanse of Chile's Atacama Desert, where the most advanced observatories study planets located outside the Solar System and the forms of life they may host. Fascinated by the discovery of an unburied corpse lying on the ground at the edge of the infinity of the cosmos, the artist invented a ritual that is at once archaic and technological, in which solar-powered mechanical arms move around the skeleton in a choreography that is as slow and precise as an autopsy. They delicately handle glass balls and amulets, engaging in gestures of a metaphysical and funerary ceremony, asking us to meditate on humanity's place in a changing world governed by technology, the film's editing being constantly recomposed in real time by a machine-learning algorithm.
The thresholds between life and death, reality and fiction, body and landscape, past, present and future, night and day, light and shadow, earth and sky, and the human and the non-human are thus reenacted ad infinitum.
Pierre Hughe (b. 1962) explores our relationship to space, time, and memory, inventing new rituals in which reality serves as a point of departure for our own imaginary worlds.
He installed his open-air workshop in the arid expanse of Chile's Atacama Desert, where the most advanced observatories study planets located outside the Solar System and the forms of life they may host. Fascinated by the discovery of an unburied corpse lying on the ground at the edge of the infinity of the cosmos, the artist invented a ritual that is at once archaic and technological, in which solar-powered mechanical arms move around the skeleton in a choreography that is as slow and precise as an autopsy. They delicately handle glass balls and amulets, engaging in gestures of a metaphysical and funerary ceremony, asking us to meditate on humanity's place in a changing world governed by technology, the film's editing being constantly recomposed in real time by a machine-learning algorithm.
The thresholds between life and death, reality and fiction, body and landscape, past, present and future, night and day, light and shadow, earth and sky, and the human and the non-human are thus reenacted ad infinitum.
Enthralled by hypnosis and psychedelics, Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) began to develop an alchemical oeuvre in the 1980s that was perpetually in the making. In his monumental cycle Axial Age (2005-2007), the artist referred to the eponymous concept theorised by the philosopher Karl Jaspers in The Origin and Goal of History (1949). This author had looked at the period of Antiquity from 800 to 200 BCE as a moment of extraordinary spiritual vitality that featured thinkers including Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Elijah, Homer, Heraclitus, and Plato.
The piece consists of nine panels that form an enigmatic sacred space wavering between opacity and transparency, shadow and light, past and present, and an organicity of matter and transcendence. Its figures and motifs suggest a lost golden age of humanity as they explore the role of spirituality in our contemporary world.
Polke mixed painting techniques from Antiquity such as grisaille, gold and silver leaf, and precious pigments such as lapis-lazuli and malachite, with modern materials such as acrylic, toxic pigments, metal components, and artificial resins. This combination creates a veritable visual alchemy through which the work becomes a living organism that evolves over time.
Enthralled by hypnosis and psychedelics, Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) began to develop an alchemical oeuvre in the 1980s that was perpetually in the making. In his monumental cycle Axial Age (2005-2007), the artist referred to the eponymous concept theorised by the philosopher Karl Jaspers in The Origin and Goal of History (1949). This author had looked at the period of Antiquity from 800 to 200 BCE as a moment of extraordinary spiritual vitality that featured thinkers including Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Elijah, Homer, Heraclitus, and Plato.
The piece consists of nine panels that form an enigmatic sacred space wavering between opacity and transparency, shadow and light, past and present, and an organicity of matter and transcendence. Its figures and motifs suggest a lost golden age of humanity as they explore the role of spirituality in our contemporary world.
Polke mixed painting techniques from Antiquity such as grisaille, gold and silver leaf, and precious pigments such as lapis-lazuli and malachite, with modern materials such as acrylic, toxic pigments, metal components, and artificial resins. This combination creates a veritable visual alchemy through which the work becomes a living organism that evolves over time.
Enthralled by hypnosis and psychedelics, Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) began to develop an alchemical oeuvre in the 1980s that was perpetually in the making. In his monumental cycle Axial Age (2005-2007), the artist referred to the eponymous concept theorised by the philosopher Karl Jaspers in The Origin and Goal of History (1949). This author had looked at the period of Antiquity from 800 to 200 BCE as a moment of extraordinary spiritual vitality that featured thinkers including Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Elijah, Homer, Heraclitus, and Plato.
The piece consists of nine panels that form an enigmatic sacred space wavering between opacity and transparency, shadow and light, past and present, and an organicity of matter and transcendence. Its figures and motifs suggest a lost golden age of humanity as they explore the role of spirituality in our contemporary world.
Polke mixed painting techniques from Antiquity such as grisaille, gold and silver leaf, and precious pigments such as lapis-lazuli and malachite, with modern materials such as acrylic, toxic pigments, metal components, and artificial resins. This combination creates a veritable visual alchemy through which the work becomes a living organism that evolves over time.
The column on the right is a different piece by Byars, called The Golden Tower, 1974
The column on the right is a different piece by Byars, called The Golden Tower, 1974
The column on the right is a different piece by Byars, called The Golden Tower, 1974
An enigmatic figure who emerged on the American scene in the late 1960s, James Lee Byars (1932-1997) lived a nomadic existence in search of a spiritual incandescence. His emblematic hue is gold, symbol of the sublime, the sacred, and transcendence. It recalls the Golden Temple in Kyoto, Japan, where the artist lived for almost a decade and where he discovered Zen Buddhism, as well as the churches of Venice, Italy, his adopted city as of the 1980s.
The works shown here form a mausoleum of light. A simple nail presented in a mahogany case acquires the aura of a relic and is both a reference to Christ's suffering and a meditation on our propensity to fetishise objects. The Golden Tower, a cylinder covered in gold leaf, illuminates the entire room. In its minimal baroque, it becomes a luminous conduit between earth and sky. A sphere of 3,333 red roses asks us to contemplate impermanence and death, a theme he took to its extreme in Byars is Elephant, the final work of the artist, conceived in Cairo, Egypt, shortly before his death from cancer. In its combination of the humble material of camel-hair rope with the gold of the all-powerful pharaohs, this installation is a metaphorical tomb, a transfiguration of a dying body.
An enigmatic figure who emerged on the American scene in the late 1960s, James Lee Byars (1932-1997) lived a nomadic existence in search of a spiritual incandescence. His emblematic hue is gold, symbol of the sublime, the sacred, and transcendence. It recalls the Golden Temple in Kyoto, Japan, where the artist lived for almost a decade and where he discovered Zen Buddhism, as well as the churches of Venice, Italy, his adopted city as of the 1980s.
The works shown here form a mausoleum of light. A simple nail presented in a mahogany case acquires the aura of a relic and is both a reference to Christ's suffering and a meditation on our propensity to fetishise objects. The Golden Tower, a cylinder covered in gold leaf, illuminates the entire room. In its minimal baroque, it becomes a luminous conduit between earth and sky. A sphere of 3,333 red roses asks us to contemplate impermanence and death, a theme he took to its extreme in Byars is Elephant, the final work of the artist, conceived in Cairo, Egypt, shortly before his death from cancer. In its combination of the humble material of camel-hair rope with the gold of the all-powerful pharaohs, this installation is a metaphorical tomb, a transfiguration of a dying body.
An enigmatic figure who emerged on the American scene in the late 1960s, James Lee Byars (1932-1997) lived a nomadic existence in search of a spiritual incandescence. His emblematic hue is gold, symbol of the sublime, the sacred, and transcendence. It recalls the Golden Temple in Kyoto, Japan, where the artist lived for almost a decade and where he discovered Zen Buddhism, as well as the churches of Venice, Italy, his adopted city as of the 1980s.
The works shown here form a mausoleum of light. A simple nail presented in a mahogany case acquires the aura of a relic and is both a reference to Christ's suffering and a meditation on our propensity to fetishise objects. The Golden Tower, a cylinder covered in gold leaf, illuminates the entire room. In its minimal baroque, it becomes a luminous conduit between earth and sky. A sphere of 3,333 red roses asks us to contemplate impermanence and death, a theme he took to its extreme in Byars is Elephant, the final work of the artist, conceived in Cairo, Egypt, shortly before his death from cancer. In its combination of the humble material of camel-hair rope with the gold of the all-powerful pharaohs, this installation is a metaphorical tomb, a transfiguration of a dying body.
Dans plusieurs de ses tableaux, Victor Man convoque des motifs récurrents et stéréotypes de l'histoire de l'art, parmi lesquels la figure de la gitane, longtemps marginalisée mais devenue centrale dans le mythe moderne. Ce thème surgit après qu'à Berlin, l'artiste et sa compagne rencontrent un groupe de jeunes femmes roms originaires de la même ville que cette dernière, qui les reconnaît. La composition de Titiriteros, teintée d'une aura symboliste, renvoie au célèbre tableau Fabula (1580) d'El Greco, une scène dont la signification, religieuse ou profane, reste incertaine. Le titre espagnol du tableau de Man désigne des marionnettistes tirant les ficelles. In several of his paintings,
Victor Man evokes clichés and stereotypes of art history, notably gypsies, fringe figures that became central in the modern myth. This theme cropped up when the artist and his partner met in Berlin a group of young Roma women who came from the same place as the latter, who recognised them. The composition of Titiriteros, a collective portrait tinged with a symbolist aura, refers to a famous subject by the painter El Greco, Fabula (1580), whose meaning - religious or pagan - has been lost. The Spanish title of Man's painting refers to puppeteers pulling strings.
Dans plusieurs de ses tableaux, Victor Man convoque des motifs récurrents et stéréotypes de l'histoire de l'art, parmi lesquels la figure de la gitane, longtemps marginalisée mais devenue centrale dans le mythe moderne. Ce thème surgit après qu'à Berlin, l'artiste et sa compagne rencontrent un groupe de jeunes femmes roms originaires de la même ville que cette dernière, qui les reconnaît. La composition de Titiriteros, teintée d'une aura symboliste, renvoie au célèbre tableau Fabula (1580) d'El Greco, une scène dont la signification, religieuse ou profane, reste incertaine. Le titre espagnol du tableau de Man désigne des marionnettistes tirant les ficelles. In several of his paintings,
Victor Man evokes clichés and stereotypes of art history, notably gypsies, fringe figures that became central in the modern myth. This theme cropped up when the artist and his partner met in Berlin a group of young Roma women who came from the same place as the latter, who recognised them. The composition of Titiriteros, a collective portrait tinged with a symbolist aura, refers to a famous subject by the painter El Greco, Fabula (1580), whose meaning - religious or pagan - has been lost. The Spanish title of Man's painting refers to puppeteers pulling strings.
Dans plusieurs de ses tableaux, Victor Man convoque des motifs récurrents et stéréotypes de l'histoire de l'art, parmi lesquels la figure de la gitane, longtemps marginalisée mais devenue centrale dans le mythe moderne. Ce thème surgit après qu'à Berlin, l'artiste et sa compagne rencontrent un groupe de jeunes femmes roms originaires de la même ville que cette dernière, qui les reconnaît. La composition de Titiriteros, teintée d'une aura symboliste, renvoie au célèbre tableau Fabula (1580) d'El Greco, une scène dont la signification, religieuse ou profane, reste incertaine. Le titre espagnol du tableau de Man désigne des marionnettistes tirant les ficelles. In several of his paintings,
Victor Man evokes clichés and stereotypes of art history, notably gypsies, fringe figures that became central in the modern myth. This theme cropped up when the artist and his partner met in Berlin a group of young Roma women who came from the same place as the latter, who recognised them. The composition of Titiriteros, a collective portrait tinged with a symbolist aura, refers to a famous subject by the painter El Greco, Fabula (1580), whose meaning - religious or pagan - has been lost. The Spanish title of Man's painting refers to puppeteers pulling strings.