Le Silence. Une fiction - NMNM - Nouveau Musée National de Monaco

Erin Shirref, Moon (détail),2010
Installation vidéo (couleur, sans son)
Courtesy of the artist and Lisa Cooley, New York

The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco presents its latest exhibition, LE SILENCE Une fiction which will be held at Villa Paloma, NMNM. The work of 25 artists will invite the visitor, via a fictional approach, to reconsider the trace that our civilisation will leave behind. The curator, Simone Menegoi, states that this exhibition offers a “fantastic account, a form of narrative décor which tells the story of a planet that has become uninhabitable for reasons unknown…”

From 2nd February until 3rd April 2012, LE SILENCE Une fiction will gather a corpus of contemporary works, ranging from Arman’s Accumulations to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs, which present the visitor with a world that is both strange and familiar. The effect is one of a reversal of history; as if the works displayed, artefacts of our contemporary era, were being observed through the eyes of an archaeologist or anthropologist from the future.

Part scientific experiment, part fictional narrative, the exhibition invites the visitor to use his imagination and depict a story. A substantial part of the exhibition consists of photographs and videos set against each other within the traditional landscape genre, yet seen from a particular perspective: the aesthetics of the contemporary Sublime, drawing on the spectacle of environmental disasters and economic collapse. Another prominent group of works is comprised of sculptures and assemblages from artists, active since the 1960’s, who use every day and waste material to create. Work by American artist Michael E. Smith, whose sculptures are made from waste collected in his home town, the urban desert of Detroit, completes the exhibition as ‘fossils’ of our consumer society.

With this exhibition, the NMNM continues its tradition of supporting exploratory missions, a project heartily endorsed by the Principality. The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco thereby supported Adrien Missika’s expedition across the Karakum desert to Darvaza, in Turkmenistan. A work entitled Darvaza, created especially for this exhibition, is projected into the narrative journey. In the same vein, the museum also enabled the curators Simone Menegoi and Cristiano Raimondi, along with art critic Chris Sharp, to explore the American town of Detroit. During this trip they met the artist Michael E. Smith and found inspiration for this exhibition.

Artists : Dove Allouche, Vladimir Arkhipov, Arman, Bartolomeo Bimbi, Maurice Blaussyld, Michel Blazy, Karl Blossfeldt, Brassaï, Peter Buggenhout, Carlos Casas, Romeo Castellucci, Lourdes Castro, Tony Cragg, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Geert Goiris, Jochen Lempert, Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre, Adrien Missika, Linda Fregni Nagler, Walter Pichler, Rudolf Polanszky, Pierre Savatier, Erin Shirreff, Michael E. Smith, Daniel Spoerri, Hiroshi Sugimoto

LE SILENCE Une fiction at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco is curated by Simone Menegoi and co-curated by Cristiano Raimondi (NMNM). A short story by Chris Sharp, accompanies the fictional drive of the exhibition.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication of around 250 pages from the NMNM, edited by Mack Books and distributed worldwide. This bilingual publication includes critical texts (one of them written by Marc Augé) and Chris Sharp’s novella.

During the opening of the exhibition, Italian artist Linda Fregni Nagler gave a performance : Things that Death Cannot Destroy(Part 5 – The Silence), 2012

Curator: Simone Menegoi
Associate Curator: Cristiano Raimondi

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