To mark the 15th birthday of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the museum is giving itself - and its public - an exhibition that is second to none. Entitled Infinite Sunday, it unfolds as a tour that encompasses the entire building and brings together over 400 works from the Centre Pompidou's collections with 40 works by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan. The result is a fascinating interweaving of past and present, irony and seriousness, subversion and melancholy.
The exhibition follows an ABC that guides visitors through the history of art and ideas like an imaginary dictionary. Well-known icons meet rarely shown pieces; the unexpected mixes with the familiar. The immersive exhibition design by the architectural duo Berger&Berger transforms the building by Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines into a circular narrative that reflects cycles of time and offers visitors a kind of endless tour - like a Sunday without end, between freedom and constraint, orientation and lingering.
Cattelan, famous for his irreverent and profound works, brings his signature style to every detail of the show. He examines the mythologies of our present, questions authority and confronts us with the fractures of our society. His gaze is characterized by a peculiar mixture of astuteness and melancholy, which elevates the project far beyond a classic collection exhibition.
Maurizio Cattelan, Spermini, 1997, Painted latex masks, 17.5 x9 x 10 cm (each)
Courtesy Maurizio Cattelan's Archive, Photo: © Attilio Maranzano
What is particularly remarkable is that not only the artist himself but also inmates of the Giudecca women's prison in Venice have their say in the texts in the hall. Their voices, supplemented by contributions from inmates from Metz who were specially trained as exhibition guides, lend the show an extraordinary dimension of participation. The accompanying book - designed by Irma Boom - is less a catalog than an autobiography by Cattelan, a further break with convention that focuses on personal and artistic reflection.
Infinite Sunday is therefore not only an anniversary exhibition, but also a manifesto for what a museum can be today: a place of encounter, friction and dialog. Fifteen years after the opening show Chefs-d'œuvre?, the Centre Pompidou-Metz reaches a new high point with this collaboration - and opens up a labyrinth of images, stories and questions to its audience that will resonate for a long time to come.
Sonia Delaunay, Le Bal Bullier, 1913, oil on canvas, 97 x 390 cm, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, AM 3307 P © Pracusa S.A. / Photo: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Audrey Laurans/Dist. GrandPalaisRmn
Infinite Sunday offers an immersive experience of the collection through a variety of different media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, video and film - in a novel dialog with the world of Maurizio Cattelan. As a major contemporary artist, Maurizio Cattelan brings his astute and unconventional approach to the exhibition, adding a new dimension to the prestigious collection.
May 8, 2025 to February 1, 2027
www.centrepompidou-metz.fr
