Etel ADNAN, "Sans titre", 2012Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Etel Adnan, Untitled, 2012
A Lebanese painter and poet, Etel Adnan lived in exile in Paris before moving to Mount Tamalpais, north of San Francisco, where she lived for many years. When she started her abstract painting work, Mount Tamalpais became an endless source of inspiration from 1955.
Anna Boghiguian, Nemausus, 2016
Artist-poet Anna Boghiguian challenges the concept of borders by traveling around the world. Her work is multifaceted and loaded with history. Here, the sail of a Nile felucca is paired with painted paper silhouettes, and tells the story of the encounter between Egypt and ancient Rome in Nîmes.
Christian BOLTANSKI, "Monument", 1985Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Christian Boltanski, Monument, 1985
At the crossroads of individual and collective memory, the works of Christian Boltanski, imbued with questioning about history, time and erasure, childhood, and death, exude a very strong emotional power. "I work to stir emotions in the audience."
Sophie CALLE, "Autoportrait (La filature)", 1981Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Sophie Calle, Autoportrait (La filature), 1981
On the border between investigation and the quest of finding one's self, Sophie Calle's work interlaces reality and fiction. In an investigative mode, she reveals intimacy and some of her private life through the distance of narrative and of reflection on documents.
César, Compression, 1989
A monument to the reality of the waste produced in abundance by consumerism, Compression challenges its potential beauty. The bodywork elements of the car symbolize the 30 Glorieuses (the thirty-year period of economic growth in France after World War II), blended with some ad signs. The compression was performed at the Durand company in Nîmes.
Stan DOUGLAS, "Abbott and Cordova 7 August 1971", 2008Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Stan Douglas, Abbott and Cordova 7 August 1971, 2008
This work of history is made up of 50 digital photographs combined into a single image, creating a cinematic effect. Using fiction, Stan Douglas meticulously re-enacts scenes of police violence during a peaceful demonstration in Vancouver.
Hans-Peter FELDMANN, "Shadow Installation", 2005Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Hans-Peter Feldmann, Shadow Installation, 2005
This moving shadow play takes us back to childhood, where enchantment meets the greatest fears. The accumulation of toys, books, tape, and bottles of water on the trays suggest that the artist, who is the master of the game, has just left.
Dan Flavin, Untitled (To Barnett Newman), 1971
A prominent figure of minimal art, Dan Flavin highlighted the impact of 20th century art in his work. The color loses its materiality and reveals the space without which the sculpture cannot exist. The primary colors of the neon lights highlight the corner of the room.
Bernard Frize, Romi, 1993
This painting is "born from chaos and chance, the forms only depend on technological properties: fluidity, amount of paint, the angle of the surface on which it drips. The visual experience does not reflect this, the evocation of mountains and lakes prevails."
On KAWARA, "Dec. 18 1992. Today Serie n°46", 1992Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
On Kawara, Dec. 18 1992. Today Serie n°46, 1992
The Date Paintings are a series of paintings created since 1966, each consisting of a monochrome painting with a date painted in white, which happens to be the day it was made. The painting is accompanied by a diary kept by On Kawara, which contextualizes the place of execution.
Yves Klein, Re 44, 1960
Internationally renowned for his IKB blue, Yves Klein created Sponge Reliefs, which are monochromatic paintings covered with sponges, symbols of the permeation of color into the universe, in this case a vibrant pink, which, like gold and blue, made the intangible visible.
Joseph KOSUTH, "One and three hammers", 1965Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Hammers, 1965
Joseph Kosuth is a major artist of the conceptual art movement. The work, a triptych composed of a hammer, its full-scale photograph and its definition in an English/French dictionary, is intended as a philosophical game around the notion of representation.
Annette MESSAGER, "Mes caoutchoucs", 2002-2003Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Annette Messager, Mes caoutchoucs, 2002–2003
Annette Messager is a collection artist and creator of chimeras. In this installation, she brings together characters and objects cut out of black rubber sheets and stages them in a disturbing, strange, and yet fascinating theater.
Sigmar Polke, Lapis-Lazuli II, 1994
Sigmar Polke is often referred to as an alchemist due to his use of rare or toxic materials. Lapis lazuli is both the concept and the material of the work. This semi-precious stone, when crushed, turns into an intense blue pigment that was once used in religious paintings to paint the Virgin's mantle.
Charlotte Posenenske, Relief Serie C, 1967–2020
Between 1966 and 1968, Charlotte Posenenske designed and exhibited six series of sculptures. She revisited the industrial manufacturing process of minimal art and tackled the question of the art market by sidestepping it—the selling price of the works matched their production cost.
Martial Raysse, Hommage à Los Angeles, 1962
Martial Raysse is one of the first artists to have used neon, "a living color, a color beyond color." By simplifying the signs to an eye, a red mouth, and flickering arrows, he created a totem expressing "the movement of modern life" and Hollywood glamour.
Gerhard RICHTER, "Abstrakte Bild", 1989Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Gerhard Richter, Abstrakte Bild, 1989
Starting from the observation that "painting has always painted only itself," Gerhard Richter's complex and multifaceted work analyzes and explores the many forms painting can assume, from monochrome to abstract and photorealistic paintings.
Niki de Saint Phalle, Composition à la trottinette, 1961
Niki de Saint-Phalle, a politically active feminist, joined the Nouveau réalisme (New Realism) group in the 1960s. In her painting performances, which included shooting bags of paint with a rifle on object compositions, she claimed to "shoot at society and its injustices."
Claude Viallat, Untitled, 1989
In this painting by Claude Viallat, an original artist of the Supports/Surfaces movement, the medium, the form, the color, and the space interact. The "form obtained by chance, by accident, is as true as any other form." It eliminates the question of the subject and occupies frameless canvases of all sizes.
Jacques VILLEGLÉ (Jacques MAHÉ DE LA VILLEGLÉ, dit), "Bleu d’Août", 1961Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain
Jacques Villeglé, Bleu d’Août, 1961
Villeglé is an advertising poster, motivated by "surprise and love at first sight." He invented a pictorial and poetic work by collecting and highlighting "advertising materials accidentally subverted by bad weather or by an anonymous and angry gesture".
Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1991
A post-conceptual artist, Christopher Wool appeared on the New York scene in the 1980s. Subverting Pop Art conventions and its printing techniques, he composes allover paintings in which he combines streaks, traces, dripping, tags, decorative patterns, or words and letters.
Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain - Nîmes - www.carreartmusee.com
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Realization: Carré d'art - Musée
Iconography: Photo Galerie Sfeir-Semler ; © Etel Adnan ; Photo D. Huguenin ; © Anna Boghiguian; Photo D. Huguenin ; © ADAGP Paris ; © SBJ/ ADAGP ; David Zwirner Gallery ; © Stan Douglas ; Photo C. Eymenier © The Estate of On Kawara ; © Succession Yves Klein c/o ADAGP Paris ; © The Estate of Sigmar Polke, Cologne / ADAGP Paris ; © Charlotte Posenenske ; © Gerhard Richter 2022 (01062022) ; © Niki Charitable Art Foundation / ADAGP, Paris ; Photo P. Trawinski ; © Christopher Wool
