For the 13th edition of Propos d’Europe, Fondation Hippocrène has invited DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation, London) to organize a new exhibition in Paris. The show, titled Le musée d’une nuit (script for leaving traces) and curated by Vincent Honoré, gathers together thirty works from the David Roberts Collection as well as a number of special commissions. The curatorial concept of the exhibition revolves around the notion of loss and memory. Loss is strongly related to the figure of the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, the creator of the building that now hosts the Foundation and that formerly constituted his own studio. Almost none of Mallet-Stevens’ architectures have survived: what remains are only traces of past projects, some left incomplete while others altered or destroyed. Also, the act of presenting a collection entails a dynamics of loss, since – as Honoré has stated – “a collection is an organism that never ceases to constitute or to escape itself”; its essence resides in the “constant loss of its own sense”. Paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, installations and editions by modern artists such as Man Ray and Tamara de Lempicka accompany works by contemporary artists including Jakuta Alikavazovic, Yto Barrada, Nina Beier and Marie Lund, Martin Boyce, Enrico David, Michael Dean, Ayan Farah, Lito S. Freeman, Bethan Huws, Pierre Huyghe, Sergej Jensen, Renaud Jerez, Sarah Lucas, Benoît Maire, Marlie Mul and Rosemarie Trockel. In addition to the works from the David Roberts Collection, the show features special commissions – an installation by Benoît Maire, a performance by Nina Beier and Marie Lund, an intervention by Renaud Jerez, and an oil-painted assemblage of wood veneers by Lito S. Freeman.
The project is part of the Parcours Privé section of FIAC 2014.
Source : CURA MAGAZINE & Fondation Hippocrène