Investigations of a Dog
Works from the FACE Collections
23 October 2010 – 16 January 2011
la maison rouge, Paris
10 Bd de la Bastille
75012 Paris, France
www.lamaisonrouge.org
FACE founding members are non-profit foundations established by private collectors who have set up public spaces for the production and promotion of contemporary art. This new alliance aims at broadening and empowering the scope of their activities through ambitious international projects.
The partners are the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (Italy), Ellipse Foundation, Cascais (Portugal), la maison rouge – Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris (France), Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm (Sweden) and DESTE Foundation, Athens (Greece)
Investigations of a dog will feature more than 40 works from the collections of the five partner institutions. The exhibition draws its title from the short story by Franz Kafka, whose main character, a dog, questions the limits of his canine existence, or rather the sense of the community to which he belongs. This constant questioning distances the dog from the others and forces him into the position of outsider, yet in his solitude he expresses his most intense form of interest for the community and his compatriots.
The artists in the exhibition share this eccentric position and employ a new language to analyse society and politics today, thus creating small worlds that are open to the world as a whole. They do so through the practice of what we could call a minor art, a term that echoes Delueze&Guattari’s notion of minor literature in their analysis of the works of Kafka.
According to French philosophers, this would be characterised by the subversive use of a language in power, by the connection of the individual and the political and by the collective arrangement of utterance, which is the process through which the individual voice turns into a communal speech. In this perspective “minor no longer characterises certain literatures but describes the revolutionary conditions of any literature within what we call the great (or established).”
The exhibiting artists share an interest in the political dimension of their time, which is expressed not only in the content of their works but primarily in the development of a practice that subverts the conventions of the adopted medium, an eccentric discourse of art that makes them talk as if they were nomads, immigrants in relation to their own language. In this sense, they are not trying to represent the voice of specific, existing communities but they are creating the potential for new collectivities to exist and express themselves.
Participating artists are:
Vasco Araujo, Virginie Barré, Philippe Bazin, Mircea Cantor, Maurizio Cattelan, Roberto Cuoghi, Mark Dion, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Urs Fischer, Fischli&Weiss, Claire Fontaine, David Hammons, Annika von Hausswolff, Thomas Hirschhorn, William Kentridge, Kimsooja, Jeff Koons, Sigalit Landau, Sherrie Levine, DeAnna Maganias, Mark Manders, Esko Männikkö, Marepe, Paul McCarthy, Boris Mikhailov, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland, Martin Parr, Navin Rawanchaikul, Aurel Schmidt, Gregor Schneider, Lara Schnitger, Santiago Sierra, Lorna Simpson, Stéphane Thidet and Kara Walker.
And Eric Pougeau in the patio: (exhibition only in Paris)
After having being show at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (fall 2009) and Ellipse Foundation (Summer 2010), the exhibition is now presented to La maison rouge – Fondation Antoine de Galbert, in Paris from October 23, 2010 to January 16, 2011.
Upcoming
February 17, 2011 – May 29, 2011: Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall
June 22, 2011 – October 15, 2011: DESTE Foundation
