4.543 billion. / Our Visual Identities

4.543 billion. The matter of matter
With contributions from more than 30 artists, 4.543 billion. The matter of matter is an exhibition that addresses works of art, collections and cultural histories in relation to ecological processes and a geological scale of time. It presents a continuum of materials and temporal landscapes—films, works on paper, photographs, sculptures, documents, and other meaningful things—and springs from the CAPC building’s former life as a warehouse for colonial commodities whose limestone walls were once deep in the ground and whose wooden beams were once part of a forest.

A central proposal of the exhibition is that works of art are part of geophysical history as much as art history. 4.543 billion attempts to take into account both a micro-local and a planetary perspective, and to rethink some of the histories of art as fragments of broader narratives about the Earth and how our place in it has been represented. What is at stake when art and museums take on greater temporal and material awareness? How might they move beyond a spatial framework of “think globally, act locally,” to “think historically, act geologically”?

With: A.J. Aalders, Lara Almarcegui, Maria Thereza Alves, Félix Arnaudin, Amy Balkin, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck in collaboration with Media Farzin, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Étienne Denisse, Hubert Duprat, Giulio Ferrario, Ângela Ferreira, Anne Garde, Ambroise-Louis Garneray, Terence Gower, Rodney Graham, Ilana Halperin (also at the Université de Bordeaux’s zoology department), Marianne Heier, Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller, Lucas Ihlein and Louise Kate Anderson, Jannis Kounellis, Martín Llavaneras, Erlea Maneros Zabala, Nicholas Mangan, Fiona Marron, Alexandra Navratil, Xavier Ribas, Alfred Roll, Amie Siegel, Lucy Skaer, Alfred Smith, Rayyane Tabet, Pierre Théron, Pep Vidal, Alexander Whalley Light, Stuart Whipps (also at the Musée des Beaux-Arts) as well as documents and objects lent by the archives of the CAPC, the Archives Bordeaux Métropole, the Archives départementales de la Gironde, and the geology collection of the UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, Université de Bordeaux.

Curated by Latitudes
As part of the cultural season Paysages Bordeaux 2017

Within the exhibition framework, Latitudes will lead the month-long residency programme Geologic Time at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada, in September–October 2017.

Our Visual Identities. Bordeaux-Paris Paris-Bordeaux
The histories of Centre Pompidou and of CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux were first inscribed in their respective cities, before expanding to what Marshall McLuhan named the “global village.” The founding intentions of our respective visual identities have been rationalized and designed by Jean Widmer, Pierre Bernard, Michel Aphesbero, Daphné Duijvelshoff or Zak Kyes. Their graphic creations have shaped the cultural landscape of our institutions with an economy of signs: the typography, the color spectrum, the layout, a logo or the lack of it, presented throughout a variety of materials in constant development over the past 40 years. This course/exhibition is conceived as a tribute to these designers and will lead the visitors from the neighboring streets to the terrace of the museum.

Curator: Martine Péan
As part of the Centre Pompidou 40th anniversary program

Also on view
Oscar Murillo: Estructuras resonantes
Curator: Osei Bonsu
As part of the 2017 Satellite programme: The Economy of Living Things
Until August 27, 2017

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: Linnaeus in Tenebris
Curator: Alice Motard
Until September 24, 2017

[sic] works from the CAPC Collection
Curator: José Luis Blondet
Permanent exhibition

Upcoming
Steffani Jemison
Curator: Osei Bonsu
As part of the 2017 Satellite programme: The Economy of Living Things
September 7–November 12, 2017

Beatriz González
Curator: María Inés Rodríguez
Retrospective exhibition organized by CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
November 23, 2017–February 25, 2018
An event organized as part of The Year France-Colombia 2017.

The CAPC musée d’art contemporain is a museum of the City of Bordeaux.

Museum patrons
Honorary patron: Château Haut-Bailly
Founding patron: Les Amis du CAPC
Leading patrons: Fondation Daniel & Nina Carasso, Lacoste Traiteur
Patrons: SUEZ, Mercure Bordeaux Cité Mondiale, Château Chasse-Spleen, SLTE, Château Le Bonnat, Le Petit Commerce

Press
Pedro Jiménez Morrás
T +33 (0)5 56 00 81 70 / p.jimenezmorras@mairie-bordeaux.fr