MO.CO.Panacée

14 rue de l'Ecole de Pharmacie, Montpellier

From June 8 to August 18, 2019.

From 12am to 07pm (the exhibition closes at 08pm) 

The Street. Where the World Is Made

Following an initial version at the Museum of Contemporary Art, MAXXI, Rome, the exhibition at La Panacée, The Street. Where the world is made, offers substantial space to video, since it is through the screen—a sort of interface between the private and the public spheres—that we perceive the world today. Hou Hanru’s project brings together 60 artists from all over the world, it offers a lively, poetic, and political panorama of this public arena. The exhibition revolves around several street-centered themes:

– Politics, with drawings and paintings dealing with social or protest movements and demonstrations by Andrea Bowers, Andrea Salvino, Marinella Senatore, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Yang Jiechang, as well as an installation by Moe Satt and videos by Éric Baudelaire, Chto Delat ?, Cinthia Marcelle, and Jonathas de Andrade.

– Everyday life (work, leisure, eating, etc.): artists now perceive the street as both an extension of the domestic space and as a locus of marginalization and social exclusion. Thus, if Halil Altindere’s work, Mobese (Gold Camera) gives an ironic twist to the surveillance cameras that line our streets, Flavio Favelli’s illuminated panels emit signals emptied of all advertising function and significance. Similar topics appear in videos by Adel Abdessemed, Ivan Argote, Marcela Armas, Mark Lewis, Jill Magid, and Fang Lu.

– Action: artists have been invading the street spaces since the 1960s. It is often felt as an ideal platform for experiments and actions that highlight the sense of depersonalization and loneliness inherent to the urban environment. Many videos—from Allora & Calzadilla, Cao Fei, and Martin Creed, to Jean-Baptiste Ganne, David Hammons, and Lin Yilin, etc.—evoke this theme.

– A transitional space: favoring the osmosis between interior and exterior, the street is a place for shared, common experiences—as Thomas Hirschhorn, Raphaël Zarka, and Simon Fujiwara remind us.

– The street is finally the cartographical zone where traffic, commerce, entertainment, and lighting intersect to set up systems of hierarchy. The street is where urban planning unfolds and where utopia overlaps with functionalism; it is there that flows of humanity and of energy are channeled. These phenomena surface in works by Rosa Barba, whose metal pipes structures amplify sounds from beneath the ground, and Zhao Zhao, who recreates a bitumen roadway from which emerge the ghosts of roadkill cats…

To accompany the exhibition Liu Qingyuan has designed a frieze, entitled Stories of the street, inspired by various artists’ live outdoor pieces and performances. There are also quotes from iconic artists, such as Vito Acconci, Daniel Buren, Valie Export, Adrian Piper, and Teching Hsieh.

Featuring works by: Adel Abdessemed, Allora & Calzadilla, Atelier Bow-Wow, Halil Altindere, Francis Alÿs, Iván Argote, Marcela Armas, Rosa Barba, Yael Bartana, Eric Baudelaire, Botto&Bruno, Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Chim Pom, Chto Delat ?, Martin Creed, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Jonathas de Andrade, Jeremy Deller, Jimmie Durham, Fang Lu, Flavio Favelli, Simon Fujiwara, Jean-Baptiste Ganne, Kendell Geers, David Hammons, Sharon Hayes, Thomas Hirschhorn, Hiwa K., Kimsooja, Kim Sora, Mark Lewis, Li Binyuan, Li Liao, Lin Yilin, Liu Qingyuan, Jill Magid, MAP Office, Cinthia Marcelle (with Tiago Mata Machado), Lim Minouk, Ahmet Ögüt, Pak Sheung Chuen (Tozer Pak), Robin Rhode, Andrea Salvino, Moe Satt, Marinella Senatore, Santiago Sierra, Sun Yuan/ Peng Yu, Koki Tanaka, The Propeller Group, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Vatamanu & Tudor, Yang Jiechang, Yang Zhenzhong, Raphaël Zarka, Zhao Zhao, Zhou Tao, Artur Żmijewski.

 

Download the Tour Booklet 

About Hou Hanru:

Hou Hanru has served as director of the MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle arte del XXI secolo in Rome since 2013. He has taken part in top international contemporary art events, such as the Nuit Blanche in Paris and the Biennials of Shanghai, Gwangju, Tirana, Istanbul, Lyon, Auckland, and Venice (curator of the French Pavilion in 1999 and of the Chinese Pavilion in 2007).

En partenariat avec: 

MAXXI