Thursday 14 October 2010
On the principle of an ABC.... : In the form of an open dialogue with the public, this programme of gatherings launched in 2006 explored the museum's collections and the vocabulary of contemporary art.
The beautifully simple qualities of Velcro, a system of reversible adhesive (a strip of velvet, a strip of hook fabric), are the 'hook' for the approaching the work Sans titre (2000) by Jean-Georges Massart. Think simplicity of materials (bamboo, fire, fig palm), simplicity in the artist's gestures (choosing, dividing up, fitting goether, burning) and simplicity of hanging (the work is "posed" on a hook). The materials are loosely but solidly assembled, in a reversible manner. Out of this meeting of materials - and very distinct materials at that (bamboo from Anduze, Catalonian palm, and fire, the perfect antithesis of the vegetal) - emerges something obvious, a balance. Within the museum's hanging, Sans titre joins in an easy dialogue on ways of evoking a landscape, with Lucien Clergue's Langage des sables and Pierre Alechinsky's work Erosion éolienne. And we're hooked by its simplicity and elegance.
