May 18–July 14, 2016
Press visit: Tuesday, May 17, 4:30pm
Nocturnal trails: Tuesday, May 17, 9:30–midnight, Saturday, May 21, 9:30pm–1am.
Inside the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Museum Night: Saturday, May 21
Palais des Beaux-Arts
13 quai Malaquais
Paris 6
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 1–7pm,
Saturday, May 21, until 1am
A project by Mark Dion
With the participation of: Art Orienté Objet, James Lee Byars, Jimmie Durham, Hélène Garcia and Emile Degorce-Dumas, Olivier Mosset, Matt Mullican, Rebecca Purcell, Dana Sherwood, Morgane Tschiember, Robert Williams and Raphaël Zarka, the seminar of Patricia Ribault and Vincent Rioux and the Students of Chaos. Night trail with: Zach Baroudi, Martin Fort and Hélène Mourrier.
Belvédère: Jeremy Demester
Jean-Marc Bustamante, Director
Sarina Basta, Exhibition Curator
Scientific committee
Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Anne-Marie Garcia, Emmanuel Schwartz
Mark Dion, whose work questions the scientific representation and categories of the zoological and botanical world, will tie in the supernatural, drawing on emblematic pieces in the rich collections of the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
ExtraNatural, a large enveloping installation, will create a dialogue between historic pieces (drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures…) and contemporary works, some of them produced by pupils and graduates of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, leading to a new type of narrative, better still, an enquiry into the frontiers of the natural.
Impossible to be reduced to a genre, the works gathered by Mark Dion, chosen for their enigmatic strength, aura and power of suggestion, are the occasion to probe into the relationship between the strange and the supernatural that spans art and creation: magic and alchemy, hybrids, monsters and grotesques, sabbaths and witches, unusual objects, plates and morphological fragments…
The questions of representation, the anthropological aspect of the works and their resonance shape the issues of Mark Dion’s total artwork, whose scenography breaks with traditional codes, sometimes diverting the objects from their original meaning and function.
Inside the Palais des Beaux-Arts, the principal strategy is for Dürer and Goya, Kawanabe and Goltzius to rub shoulders with contemporary works by Jimmy Durham, Hélène Garcia and Emile Degorce-Dumas, Matt Mullican, Morgane Tschiember, and other anonymous works…
The two nocturnal trails through the very heart of the Beaux-Arts de Paris will allow visitors to discover surprising places, some of them open to the public for the first time. On leaving the Melpomène room, the route will give access to the salons of the Hôtel de Chimay, the library and the Chimay gardens, passing by the basements that are a meeting place for statues and busts.
ExtraNatural results from a concerted process of reflection and research, carried out in close collaboration with the curators of the collections of the Beaux-Arts. Particularly significant for the artist, the collection’s historic continuity, tightly linked to its mission to transmit artistic practices, echoes his method as an artist and archaeologist of museum reality.
The choice of the institution and the places that house this particular work hence gains all its meaning.
The works united by Mark Dion invite the spectator to renew their experience of curiosity through more than 500 years of history.
An exhibition catalogue will be published by Beaux-Arts de Paris editions.
Press contact
Opus 64, Valérie Samuel, Aurélie Mongour, [email protected] / T +33 1 40 26 77 94
Partners
With the support of Sonia Rykiel and the Association of Friends of the Beaux-Arts de Paris
