Toujours, the Museum as Witness

Museo Amparo presents a selection of some of the most important works from the Collection of the CAPC Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux, representative of different moments in its history. The show includes pieces from the early years after the Museum’s foundation as well as from the 1980s, when it became more established; it also highlights its role in presenting new generations of artists and curators that represent the zeitgeist of different periods. Toujours reveals a collection in constant movement, aware of cultural constructs and the spirit and ideas of its time.

The exhibition title Toujours— “always” in French—is taken from the sculpture by Jack Pierson that welcomes the visitors to the show. This word evokes the idea of the continuity of an institution, of a collection and of the works created by the artists that have shaped the history of the CAPC. With its different definitions, the idea of continuity also refers to the time that has passed since the Museum’s foundation, its activities, the consistency of its programs and the commitment of the teams that have worked there.

How does a piece of art transcend? The word toujours also alludes to the museum’s role as witness to history and to its main mission: acquiring, conserving, studying, and exhibiting its collection. This is why the show focuses on a selection of pieces that establish a dialogue between them. Conceptual pieces by artists such as Daniel Buren and Sol LeWitt, closely related to the Museum’s first program of exhibitions or presented in later shows organized by Harald Szeeman and Marie-Laure Bernadac, coexist with emblematic interventions by artists such as Annette Messager and pieces by more recent creators such as Leonor Antunes, Wolfgang Tillmans and Lili Reynaud-Dewar.

This selection of works seeks to underline the museum’s role and its historic responsibility in the construction of a collection. Each piece is a witness, an idea, an opinion and it forms part of the history of the period in which it was made. It can thus be said that the pieces acquire a new meaning, because a collection reflects the different ways in which artists are witnesses as well as active participants of their time.

Toujours proposes an interpretation related to the current socio-political context and the continuity of certain historical phenomena. It also analyzes possible relationships between language, movement, and space. Each piece has its own cultural reference and when juxtaposed with others in a new context, a dialogue is established in which a new analysis can arise—another point of view about the history of a place (which could be the museum) or about our common history.

Among the works included in the exhibition are Wall Drawing no. 2, 1968–90 by Sol LeWitt that establishes a link between Minimalism and Conceptual Art. Encadrant-Encadré, 3 rythmes pour 4 murs, 1991, created specifically by Daniel Buren for his solo show at CAPC musée that year, occupies an important place in the CAPC collection. Inventaire photographique des objets ayant appartenu au jeune home d’Oxford, 1973, by Christian Boltanski, a representative piece of his ongoing research on memory, and the most recent acquisition, Somnium, 2011, by Rosa Barba, a film inspired on the novel of astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered the first science fiction novel. The images present an uncertain landscape, inhabited  between fiction and reality.