A Republic of Art
French Regional Collections of Contemporary Art
27 June–4 October 2015
Opening: Saturday 27 June 2015
6:30pm: performance MMoS* (Olletsac) by Elodie Lesourd
Van Abbemuseum
Bilderdijklaan 10
Eindhoven
The Netherlands
T +31 (0) 40 238 1000
info [at] vanabbemuseum.nl
www.vanabbemuseum.nl
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A Republic of Art is an exhibition about the world of visual culture in the French republic from the 1980s until today. To trace this history, it draws on the extraordinary art collections put together by the FRACs (Fonds Régionaux d’Art Contemporain). These 23 independent organisations, spread throughout France and supported by the state, have gathered over 26,000 international artworks from the last 30 years. Guided by local contexts and a view of the world from France, their combined collections represent an un-paralleled configuration of art from this period.
Beginning in the 1980s, A Republic of Art reflects how the world began to move closer together through changes at political, technological and cultural levels. A particular emphasis is placed on the decade of the ’90s and an approach to art that would subsequently become known as “relational aesthetics.” As the 2000s progressed, art became both more global and more located, with different cultures representing themselves on the world stage. In this period, site-specific commissions coincided with digital distribution and the irrepressible growth of international biennales. Global migration led to important cultural changes and national artistic styles seem to be erased in favour of the shared aesthetics of contemporary art.
Spanning the ten rooms of the old building of the Van Abbemuseum with a selection of more than a hundred works, certain key questions emerge such as how much does art capture the spirit of a moment and where do the personal visions of an artist connect to the collective recollections of a society?
E-publication: A Republic of Art
The exhibition will be accompanied by an e-publication with contributions by Ami Barak, Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher, Diana Franssen, Bernard de Montferrand, Le Peuple qui Manque, Stephen Wright and an interview with FRAC directors Catherine Elkar, Xavier Franceschi and Laurence Gateau.
Language: English and French.
Publication date: June 2015.
Managing editor: Lena Reisner.
Design: 75b.
Artists
Absalon, Agnès Accorsi, Dennis Adams, Lara Almarcegui, Yto Barrada, Bibliothèque Fantastique, Ursula Biemann, Dara Birnbaum, Monica Bonvicini, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Daniel Buren, Sophie Calle, Marta Caradec, Alex Chan, Henri Coldeboeuf, documentation céline duval, Jimmie Durham, Latifa Echakhch, Harun Farocki, Mounir Fatmi, Cao Fei, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Michel François, Claire Fontaine, Meschac Gaba, General Idea, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Renée Green, Subodh Gupta, Hans Haacke, Raymond Hains, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carsten Höller, Douglas Huebler, Pierre Huyghe, Bouchra Khalili, Matthieu Laurette, Louise Lawler, Paul McCarthy, Gustav Metzger, Antoni Muntadas, N55, Jean-Christophe Norman, Boris Ondreicka, ORLAN, Gabriel Orozco, Sener Özmen/Cengiz Tekin, Philippe Parreno, Yan Pei-Ming, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Gerhard Richter, Jimmy Robert, Bruno Serralongue, Cindy Sherman, Simon Starling, Jessica Stockholder, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Luc Tuymans, Ben Vautier, Huang Yong Ping, Chen Zhen
Curators
Annie Fletcher and Diana Franssen
Partners
A Republic of Art is organised in collaboration with PLATFORM, the umbrella organisation of the 23 FRACs in France. FRAC Advisory board: Catherine Elkar, Xavier Franceschi, Laurence Gateau, Anne-Claire Duprat.
Subsidisers
Subsidisers are le ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Institut Français, le ministère des Outre-Mer, Ambassade de France aux Pays-Bas, VSBfonds, Fondation Hippocrène, Les Inrockuptibles.
For more information on A Republic of Art, you can visit www.vanabbemuseum.nl.
