Peintures/Painting

The exhibition Peintures/Painting is uniting the artistic creation of French artists and of those artists, who have been living in France since 1972. As part of the project ART FRANCE BERLIN, organized by the Embassy of the French Republic in Berlin in autumn 2006, the exhibition will take place at the Berlin Martin-Gropius-Bau between September 23rd and November 12th, 2006.

The artworks mainly derive from the collections of the Musée national d’art moderne (MNAM) / Centre Pompidou and the Fonds national d’art contemporain (FNAC), the two most important state collections for modern and contemporary art in France. Thus, the event is a demonstration of the acquisition policy of both institutions in the field of painting.

In addition to the exhibition, the visitor gets a unique chance to view works from the above mentioned collections which will be shown at the Embassy of the French Republic in Berlin. And, last but not least, commissioned works from emerging contemporary artists are granted an extra amount of space and attention.

Each exhibition is the result of a subjective point of view, an individual, curatorial choice. This subjective choice is even emphasized when several criteria have to be taken into consideration. On the contrary, Peintures/Painting is linking just two criteria: the first one concerns the media of painting while the second one deals with the question of nationality respectively the place of residence.

The exhibition is not following the ‘wave’ of multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural exhibition, but favours to present and arrange the works according to the strict, alphabetical order of the artists’ names. This simple idea, almost touching absurdity, turns this exhibition into an exercise in style.

Peintures/Painting shows approx. 80 works, following the principle: one artist, one oeuvre, one moment of contemplation. It creates unexpected groupings, and deconstructs an art history of trends and tendencies. By doing so, one finds Arnal beside Arrayo, Erró besides Fanchon, Hucleux by Hyber and Yan Pei-Ming alongside with Zao Wou-Ki. And surely, the coincidence of the alphabet holds other surprises, too.

In cooperation with the media partner arte, a customized supporting programme of artists’ portraits will be shown at the Martin-Gropius-Bau cinema.