June 14, 2024 – August 11, 2024
Title of the exhibition :
Le Décathlon d’Apollon / Apollo’s Decathlon
Sehnsucht and Displacement
by Renate Aller
” Sehnsucht is an intoxicant, a medium of transport; to contemplate Sehnsucht means to imagine an uncontaminated space, a realm of innocence and immediacy.”
Landscapes represent disparate belief systems.
They present different cultures and convey a sense of belonging. Land is an actual place and anywhere in the world, identities are closely tied to it. A landscape represents that in its best iteration.
Echoing the forms of the landscape, an image of the human body is paired to mirror our presence. There is a performative aspect in this pairing. Action art is linked to the endeavor to remove the separation between art and life.
Politically motivated movements and powers are creating the condition of displacements.
We are at a point where we as people are evolving and moving rapidly forward in our development as humans and have a collective awareness of changes that need to be made whilst the climate emergency unfolds in front of our eyes.
The natural world we live in is changing faster and faster to make living conditions unbearable for many creating a disconnect from their known space and home.
Shifting tectonic plates are also reminders of our own shifting awareness and identity in relationship to place.We always try to assess where we are in relationship to our surroundings, be it an image, actual nature, a city, or even the emotional and political landscape.
A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though
he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.
His eyes are starring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.
This is how one pictures the angel of history.
His face is turned away toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of
events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has
been smashed.But a storm is blowing from paradise: is has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
English translation of German narration (Walter Benjamin)
„Angelus Novus“ by Walter Benjamin, Illuminationen, Seite 255
above writing by Renate Aller, June 2024
A group exhibition curated by Lara Pan along side the conceptual “Art & Language” collection
Apollo’s Decathlon, a conceptual Cultural Olympiad bringing together artists from around the world.
From June 14 to August 11 2024, the Château de Montsoreau – Museum of Contemporary Art will be hosting a temporary exhibition entitled The Cultural Olympiad, Paris 2024.
Art & Language is a movement created in England in 1968 according to the name of the newspaper. The collaboration between the founding artists, Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin and Harold Hurell began in 1966 when they were still teachers in England at the University of Coventry. The journal Art-Language – the first issue of which is entitled “The Journal of Conceptual Art” – was published in 1969. Between 1968 and 1982, more than fifty artists took part in the activities of the Art & Language movement, including New Yorkers Joseph Kosuth and Ian Burn. Later, Charles Harrison and Mel Ramsden joined them. Ten years after its creation, the Art & Language movement is undergoing profound changes. Two of its members, Mel Ramsden and Michael Baldwin, are now continuing the project.
Adress :
Château de Montsoreau – musée d’Art contemporain, Passage du marquis de
Geoffre 49730 Montsoreau