Progressive and incredibly exciting: in the coming months, the wonderful Centre Pompidou-Metz will be focusing on the impressive work of Suzanne Valadon and the global mass phenomenon of video games, among other things.
It is one of the most important international centers of contemporary art: located in an iconic building designed by star architects Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines, the Centre Pompidou-Metz attracts almost 300,000 visitors every year with its multidisciplinary, incredibly lively program - many of whom also come from Germany, as Saarbrücken is only an hour's drive from Metz. The influential institution's top-class exhibitions are regarded as progressive and trend-setting - an assessment that the program of the Centre Pompidou-Metz will confirm in the coming months in the most gratifying way. An overview:
The Repetition: Marie Laurencin, La Répétition, 1936, Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne © Foujita Foundation / Adagp, Paris - Photo : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / image Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI
"The Repetition"
In 1936, Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) painted the picture "La Répétition" ("The Rehearsal", also translatable as "The Repetition"): It shows a group of young women at a rehearsal, honing their artistic skills through repetition. One woman holds a songbook, another a guitar, a third indicates a dance step. But repetition is not only the theme of this painting, which is nothing other than Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) in a modified form, but also its method: all the faces are identical - and an expression of Laurencin's intention to bring out repetition in repetition. The Centre Pompidou-Metz is now showing with the exciting - and very important! - exhibition "The Repetition" shows that a creative process can also consist of repetition, emphasis, multiplication or accumulation. The extensive show thus questions the concept of genuine invention, which is anchored in the history of Western art in the 20th and 21st centuries as a synonym for creative freedom. Using a subjective selection of works from the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, it focuses on the creative processes of repetition - regardless of whether these appear in the objects or forms depicted.
until January 27, 2025
"The Gates of Possibility": Aïda MULUNEH, The Shackles of Limitations ("Water Life Series"), 2018 Courtesy l'artiste et WaterAid © Aïda Muluneh. Used with permission. Commissioned by Water Aid
"The gates of the possible"
With the inspiring exhibition "The Gates of Possibility. Art and Science Fiction", the Centre Pompidou-Metz is also making it possible, until Easter, to immerse oneself in the fascinating world of science fiction, a genre that confronts people with radical otherness and offers emancipation from the prevailing political discourses. The show presents around 200 works from the late 1960s to the present day and, based on the pressing current demands for utopias for the 21st century, aims in a convincing way to stimulate debate, inspire and convey new hope.
until April 10, 2023
Suzanne Valadon, La Chambre bleue, 1923, Limoges, musée des Beaux-Arts, en dépôt au Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'Art moderne © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Jacqueline Hyde
"Suzanne Valadon. Un monde à soi"
From mid-April 2023, the Centre Pompidou-Metz will also be hosting a major exhibition that must be ranked among the highlights of the international art year 2023: Almost fifty years after her last retrospective in France, the show "Suzanne Valadon. Un monde à soi" offers a profound exploration of the expressive - and decidedly contemporary - nature of the work of the fascinating French painter (1865-1938). Valadon's portraits, still lifes and landscapes irresistibly defy convention: She boldly and courageously paints as she sees - without any embellishment, without any sexual inhibitions. And yes, one can rightly assume that this also manifests her desire to escape the dominant "male gaze". Suzanne Valadon's very personal view of the depiction of childhood, youth and - in particular - nudity set her apart from the images that characterized her time. Instead of lasciviously draped women, Valadon painted silhouettes that corresponded to naked reality, even going so far as to expose her own body to this critical gaze at the height of her career.
With over two hundred works (such as those from Edgar Degas' personal collection with loans from the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée de l'Orangerie and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), the exhibition curated by Chiara Parisi, Director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, illustrates the extraordinary breadth and diversity of Suzanne Valadon's oeuvre. Archive material and important works that inspired Valadon or of which she herself is the subject also illustrate the historical and artistic context surrounding the painter from the end of the 19th century to the looming Second World War.
April 15 to September 11, 2023
"Worldbuilding. Video games and art in the digital age"
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist (Serpentine Gallery, London), the exhibition "Worldbuilding. Video games and art in the digital age': 2.8 billion people played video games in 2021, countless people spend many hours a day in a parallel world and immerse themselves in different lives and identities. There is no doubt that video games in the 21st century have the same significance as a leading medium that films (in the 20th century) and novels (in the 19th century) once had. The exhibition, developed in cooperation with the Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf), now examines the various ways in which artists have been able to sneak into video games and transform them into a genuine art form. The brilliant show includes around 30 digital exhibits, from single-channel video creations to special immersive and interactive environments, some of which are created especially for the occasion. After artists began integrating the visual language of video games into their work several decades ago, "Worldbuilding" now explores for the first time - and in a compelling way - game aesthetics as part of artistic practice and takes a close look at the unique possibilities that game development offers artists in creating a world: Rules can be made, environments, systems and dynamics can be created and changed - and new kingdoms can emerge
June 10, 2023 to January 15, 2024
Elmgreen & Dragset, The One & The Many, 2010 et The Outsiders, 2020 © Adagp, Paris 2022 / © Studio Elmgreen & Dragset © VBK Vienna 2023
"Elmgreen & Dragset. Good Luck"
With "Good Luck" ("Bonne Chance"), a comprehensive presentation of works by the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset will also be on the program of the Centre Pompidou-Metz from June 2023. The exhibition - a mixture of installation, sculpture and performance - consists of a full-size apartment building, a circus arena, an abandoned playground and other urban elements that together form a series of dream-like scenarios. Parts of the exhibition will gradually appear, disappear and reappear as it progresses. This highly anticipated solo presentation by Elmgreen & Dragset, among the most influential artists of the 21st century and known for their transformation of exhibition spaces, will span the monumental Grande Nef, the Forum, the rooftops of the galleries and the garden, bringing together existing and new works.
June 10, 2023 to April 1, 2024
