L’art dans tous ses états – chap.8

Opening on Friday 17 November 2017 at 7 pm

Curator : Richard Penloup

 

With the works* of : François Arnal, Guillaume Dégé, Xavier Zimmerman, Noam Toran, Carole Benzaken, Valérie Favre, Erica Baum, Regine Kolle, Bruce Nauman, Bruno Peinado, Shimabuku, Johannes Wohnseifer, Michel François, Julien Crépieux et Bruno Persat.

* Artworks from the frac île-de-france’s collection

 

A notion persists that art and sport are directly opposed or that there is even antagonism between them. This idea readily permeates spontaneous conversations between visitors at exhibitions for example, whereas boxing is categorised as a ‘noble art’ and the most talented football players excel at ‘the art of football’. If language awards sportsmen a special status, then the presumption of disconnect is unsteady. One may wonder whether sport is an art and sportsmen artists but the polysemy of the terms shapes extensive ramifications that it seems pointless in trying to exhaust with just one exhibition. Sport extends beyond physical activities, a condition that reveals the complexity of its definition. In this way research into the geography of sport brings together competition sports and recreational sporting activities in the expression ‘sports culture’ because they implement, in different forms, athletic movements in appropriate spaces. Researchers indicate a regulation of places, times, connections and bonds from which a synthetic aspect could be deducted especially through geometry and colours; in the words of the historian Michel Pastoureau (the colours of the stadium 1990) a football match is ‘a polychromatic symphony’. Where art provides symbolic resources, in an incantatory way it might be said that sports cultures have always been a field of exploration for artists, thus in the vicinity of the history of art, in no particular order, examples include Edouard Manet, Nicolas de Staël, Wim Delvoye, Richard Fauguet, ballet, riding, swimming, cycling, volleyball, etc.

The exhibition of artworks from the frac île-de-france collection at Les Réservoirs tends toward this potential point of convergence of the ‘primordial character of the relationship of sport with space’ , as they recall that the layout of the space is also an essential feature of plastic arts.

 

Les Réservoirs – 2 rue des réservoirs, 78520 Limay
Free admission
Thursday, Friday from 9am to 11am and from 2pm to 6pm
Saturday, Sunday from 3pm to 6pm