TRANSLATION
June 23 - September 18, 2005
Palais de Tokyo, site de création contemporaine
13, avenue du Président Wilson
F – 75116 Paris
info [at] palaisdetokyo.com
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Vanessa Beecroft
Michael Bevilacqua
Ashley Bickerton
Cai Guo-Qiang
Maurizio Cattelan
Verne Dawson
Matt Greene
Mike Kelley
Jeff Koons
Liza Lou
Ningura Napurrula
Shirin Neshat
Takashi Murakami
Cady Noland
Chris Ofili
Gabriel Orozco
Yinka Shonibare
Shahzia Sikander
Joseph Kosuth
Kara Walker
Nari Ward
Christopher Wool
With the collaboration of M/M (Paris)
TRANSLATION
The Palais de Tokyo has invited M/M (Paris) to put on display some of the major artworks from one of the most prestigious collections of contemporary art in Europe, the Dakis Joannou Collection. For two months a veritable visual opera will occupy the whole Palais de Tokyo, bringing together under one roof major artworks by some of the leading artists of the last two decades. Plunged by M/M (Paris) into an unexpected multiform graphic context, essential works of art will go through multiple translations…
A unique exhibition experience
“A new form of modernity has always appeared,” wrote Michel Foucault, “each time our relationship to the present found itself drastically changed by history.” What would be the current form of “modern” in art today in the age of globalization, that gigantic movement that is calling into question all that we know?
TRANSLATION will try to sketch out an answer to that question in the form of a veritable visual opera in which works from The Dakis Joannou Collection set out in the Palais de Tokyo by the French graphic designers M/M (Paris) – Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak – who are well known for both their work with Björk or at Vogue and their close connections with numerous artists of their generation.
TRANSLATION sets out to take stock of today’s art via these two graphic designers’ own view of major artworks from the recent past: Are we about to see a new modernism appear, one founded on a resistance to the uniformization of culture?
After 20th-century modernism, which aspired to the international language of abstraction, the aim for the artists of today is to translate into a contemporary language the particularities of their specific cultural identity, their social singularity, their difference. It is a “translation” in both sense of the word, i.e., the usual meaning of the term and its original Latin sense of something “carried over” or “transferred.”
This mutant form of a hybrid culture, this art of resisting the uniformization of cultures and the standardization of the world economy, might best be called altermodernism. TRANSLATION is both an attempt to approach that new spirit and, as the result of the displays worked out by M/M (Paris), a unique exhibition experience.
M/M (Paris)
The graphic designers and artists Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak sign all their work M/M (Paris). They move fluently between the worlds of fashion, art, music, cinema, theater, and creative photography.
The Dakis Joannou Collection
The Dakis Joannou Collection is one of the most important collections of contemporary art in Europe and features some of the most representative and decisive artists of the late 20th-century.
The Deste Foundation for Contemporay Art
Established in 1983 by Dakis Joannou and based in Athens, Deste is a non-profit foundation that explores the relationship between contemporary art and culture. “Monument to Now”, the last major show organised by the Foundation during the 2004 Olympic Games, featured 95 leading international artists, all from The Dakis Joannou Collection.
Curators: Nicolas Bourriaud, Jérôme Sans and Marc Sanchez
For further information
> The press release of the exhibition www.palaisdetokyo.com/fr/presse/communiques/translation;
> The Palais de Tokyo website www.palaisdetokyo.com;
> The Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art website www.deste.gr;
> The M/M (Paris) website www.mmparis.com;
> The exhibition “Translation” is produced with the collaboration of The Deste Foundation for Contemporay Art, Athens.
