Upcoming exhibitions
Centre Pompidou-Metz
1, Parvis des Droits-de-l’Homme
Metz
France
Hours: Monday–Friday 11am–6pm,
Saturday 10am–8pm, Sunday 10am–6pm
Closed on Tuesday
T +33 (0) 3 87 15 39 39
contact [at] centrepompidou-metz.fr
presse [at] centrepompidou-metz.fr
1984–1999. The Decade
May 24, 2014–March 2, 2015
Curator: Stéphanie Moisdon, art critic and independent curator
Exhibition scenography based on an artistic project by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture paints the portrait of a generation of nomads, born between 1965 and 1977. “X” refers to the anonymity of a new cultural category, conscious of its own burst and of the end of heroic tales. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is the obsession and soul of this generation of individuals whose life was marked by the advent of the Internet, the end of history and militancy, and the transition from the reproductive age to that of “unlimited” access.
This generation is also the first to revive, in art, remembered stories of pioneers and explorers, all kinds of spectres and holograms, disincarnated toons, images of man’s first steps on the Moon and Armstrong’s distorted voice. Together they define new ways of relating to the world; new forms of experimentation, transgression and re-appropriation which go against earlier (counter-) revolutions.
1984-1999. The Decade tackles a decade that defies definition and disaffirms past attempts to do so. Beyond decennial retrospectives and compilations, it is a biographical space composed of objects, sounds, voices, images, reflections and sensations.
The exhibition is a mirror-image of the spirit of the 1990s. It does not attempt to recreate an era nor to sanctify an ideal and lost age, but seeks instead to bring up to date the forms and procedures which anticipated today’s artistic creation. Working from a survey of some of the 1990s’ central figures, its purpose is to collect objects and sources which survived and inspired the decade, and to create new, non-hierarchical arrangements between art, literature, film, music, architecture and design.
Imagined by major international artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, the exhibition scape presents itself as an intermediate space, between city and nature, inside and outside, day and night.
Simple Shapes
June 13–November 5, 2014
An exhibition by the Centre Pompidou-Metz and the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Curator: Jean de Loisy, President of Palais de Tokyo (Paris)
Associate curators: Sandra Adam-Couralet and Mouna Mekouar, independent curators
The exhibition Simple Shapes brings to the fore our fascination with simple shapes, from prehistoric to contemporary. It also reveals how these shapes were decisive in the emergence of the Modern Age. The years between the 19th and 20th centuries saw the return of quintessential shapes through major universal expositions which devised a new repertoire of shapes, the simplicity of which would captivate artists and revolutionise the modern philosophy.
Nascent debates in physics, mathematics, biology and aesthetic had important consequences on mechanics, industry, architecture and art in general. While visiting the 1912 Salon de la Locomotion Aérienne with Constantin Brancusi and Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp stopped short before an aeroplane propeller and declared, “Painting is dead. Who could do better than this propeller?”
These pared-down, non-geometric shapes, which occupy space in a constant progression, are no less fascinating today. Contemporary artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Anish Kapoor, Ernesto Neto or Tony Smith or are as attentive to simple shapes as were the inventors of modernity.
The exhibition draws on the senses to explore the appearance of simple shapes in art, nature and tools.
Current exhibitions
Beacons
Since February 14
Paparazzi!
Photographers, stars and artists
Until June 9
Only 85 min via high-speed train from Paris.
3 hours from Basel by train.
