Pliure. Prologue (La part du feu)
(Fold. Prologue (The share of the fire))
30 January–12 April 2015
Opening: 29 January, 6:30pm
Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian – Délégation en France
39 bd de la Tour Maubourg
75007 Paris
Curator: Paulo Pires do Vale
Works by Helena Almeida, Christian Boltanski, Lewis Carroll, Lourdes Castro, Geoffrey Chaucer, Rui Chafes, Claude Closky, d’Alembert, Raffaella della Olga, Diderot, Dürer, Marcel Duchamp, Olafur Eliasson, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Robert Filliou, Jean-Luc Godard, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, René de Lorraine, William Morris, Bruce Nauman, Alain Resnais, Ed Ruscha, Dayanita Singh, Michael Snow, François Truffaut, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Wolf Vostell, Lawrence Weiner and Francesca Woodman
The exhibition Pliure explores the significance of the book and “the infinite sum of its possibilities” (Blanchot).What can occur to a book when it is in permanent relation with an artistic gesture? How is art transformed in dialogue with a book and how is a book transformed by art? On these occasions, the book becomes a laboratory for aesthetic experiences, while leading towards such experiences by its very essence. This exhibition does not aim to be retrospective, historical, or to function as an anthology. Pliure does not claim to embrace an entire theme or to prove a definitive theory but it attempts to show how the realm of books has provoked art and continues to do so. The term “pliure” (fold) refers in part to an action (and even to a specific function in a former printing factory), but also to the trace left by this action and therefore to the fold or the crease this action imprints on the paper. As such, the fold synthesizes the act of doing and what has been done, it is at once a memory and the consequence of a gesture. With the fold, the book has two possibilities: it opens or it closes, reveals or hides. Thanks to the fold, something unexpected is the other side of the page and this is the characteristic mystery of the book.
The exhibition bring together approximately 40 works dating from the 16th to the 21st centuries: films, sculptures, installations, paintings and rare books.
Pliure questions and enlarges our traditional perception of books and artworks, imbued with the strong belief that, as Mallarmé would say, “there is no explosion but a book.”
The ENSBA (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris) will receive the second part of this exhibition. Pliure. Epilogue (la bibliothèque, l’univers), 10 April to 7 June, Palais des Beaux Arts de Paris.
In co-production with the ENSBA.
Press contact details:
Miguel Magalhães: m.magalhaes [at] gulbenkian-paris.org / T +01 53 85 93 76
Clémence Bossard: c.bossard [at] gulbenkian-paris.org / T +01 53 85 93 81
