LE SILENCE Une fiction
2 February–3 April 2012
Nouveau Musée National de Monaco –
Villa Paloma
56 boulevard du Jardin Exotique
98000 Monaco
Curator: Simone Menegoi
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 February 2nd until April 3rd, 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, artifacts 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. Works by American artist Michael E. Smith, whose sculptures are made from waste collected in his hometown, the urban desert of Detroit, complete 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.
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 will be accompanied by a publication of around 250 pages from the NMNM, edited by Mack Books and distributed worldwide. This bilingual publication will include critical texts (one of them written by Marc Augé) and Chris Sharp’s novella.
At the private viewing, there will be a performance by the Italian artist Linda Fregni Nagler, Things that death cannot Destroy (Part 5- The Silence), 2012.
List of 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
Curator’s Biography
Born in 1970, Simone Menegoi is an art critic and has been an independent curator since 2005.
Press Contact:
Elodie Biancheri: e.biancheri@nmnm.mc
Brunswick Arts: NMNM@brunswickgroup.com
