Sarkis
Press release
Musée du Louvre
Sully Wing
Salle de la Maquette
February 21–May 21, 2007
This exhibition is made possible in
part by the Cercle des Jeunes
Mécènes du Louvre.
Exhibition curator:
Marie-Laure Bernadac,
chief curator, special
advisor on contemporary
art at the Louvre
Encounters with Uccello,
Grünewald, Munch and Beuys
In honor of the Year of Armenia in France, the Louvre has
extended an invitation to the Turkish-born Armenian artist
Sarkis. His project, in the form of an installation, is a reflection
on space and time. Through the medium of video transmission,
Sarkis engages in dialogue with the four works that have meant
the most to him in his life as an artist: the Battle of San Romano
by Paolo Uccello in the Louvre, the Isenheim Altarpiece by
Matthias Grünewald in the Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, The
Scream by Edvard Munch in the National Gallery, Oslo and the
Werkkomplex by Joseph Beuys in the Hessian State Museum,
Darmstadt. These four works are filmed in their respective
museums and displayed in real time at the Louvre on four large
screens. Beneath each of these screens a work by Sarkis is
presented (either a sculpture or a video) and “cartels” are
positioned alongside the filmed image, consisting of works from
the collections of the Department of Decorative Arts and works in
glass by Patrick Neu.
Encounters with Uccello, Grünewald, Munch and Beuys
Sarkis, Proposal for an Installation at the
Louvre, detail
© adagp, Paris, 2006
Event organized with the support of
“Arménie, mon amie”, the official Year
of Armenia in France
Visitor information
Hours
Open daily except Tuesdays from 9
a.m. to 6 p.m., and until 10 p.m. on
Wednesdays and Fridays
Further information
+33 (0)1 40 20 53 17 - www.louvre.fr
Admission fee
Access to the exhibition is included
in the purchase of an admission to
the Museum’s permanent
collections
Musée du Louvre
Communications
Aggy Lerolle
aggy.lerolle@louvre.fr
Sarkis pays homage to these four masterpieces by presenting four of
his own works. The first of these tributes consists of a rectangular
gilded wooden crate, filled with taped recordings of music (Wagner,
Schoenberg, Webern, Berg) and broken neon lights (originally part of
the installation for the bicentenary of the French Revolution at Valmy
in 1989) installed in front of Uccello’s Battle of San Romano. Au
commencement, le toucher, an installation consisting of six screens
arrayed in the form of a cross and previously exhibited in Colmar, is
directly inspired by the renowned altarpiece. A second film, a work
conceived specifically for this exhibition entitled Au commencement,
l’œil de Munch, enters into dialogue with the Norwegian artist’s
famous painting, The Scream. Lastly, the shelves filled with sheets of
colored felt, entitled Sommeil abandonné coloré, reflect upon the
Werkkomplex, the only one of Beuys’ installations completed by the
artist himself.
Each of these four encounters is accompanied by a “cartel”,
consisting of either one or several works from the collections of the
Department of Decorative Arts at the Louvre, selected by the artist,
and presented in glass cases: a Byzantine medallion representing a
crucifixion for the Grünewald, a Syrian gilded glass wall tile and a
Rhenian portable altar for the Beuys, a bronze horseman for the
Uccello, and a bust of an angel for the Munch. Two engraved smoked
glass pieces by the contemporary artist Patrick Neu, representing in
miniature form the two other versions of the Battle of San Romano
painted by Uccello (London, Florence), are presented along with the
horseman. Sarkis thus creates, through the use of modern technology,
an unprecedented virtual museum that engages with his favored
themes—memory and energy—and which allows him to bring
together masterpieces of art of various periods and times.
Press relations
Laurence Roussel
+33 (0)1 40 20 84 98 / 84 52 (fax)
laurence.roussel@louvre fr
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This exhibition is organized with
the participation of the following
media partners
Sarkis
Born in Istanbul to an Armenian family in 1938, Sarkis
Zabunyan studied at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts
(Mimar Sinan University). A resident of Paris since 1961, his
studio is located in Villejuif. Although he at first turned to
painting, his work soon evolved in the direction of sculptures
and installations including both audio and video works.
This new direction was made clear as early as 1969 through the
now historic exhibition Quand les attitudes deviennent formes,
organized by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle in Bern.
Sarkis participated in Documenta VI and VII in Kassel in 1977
and 1982, in the Istanbul Biennial in 1987, 1989 and 1995 and
in the Venice Biennial in 1993. In France, Sarkis has enjoyed
several solo exhibitions at venues including the Modern Art
Museum of the City of Paris in 1984, the Nantes Fine Arts
Museum in 1989 and 1997, the Magasin, Center for
Contemporary Art in Grenoble, the Pompidou Center in 1993,
the CAPC in Bordeaux in 2000, and the ENSBA-Lyon and the
Lyon Contemporary Art Museum in 2003. In the fall of 2006,
he presented Alive and After at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Related events
At the Louvre
Sarkis
Au commencement, le toucher
from November 9, 2005 to February
5,
2006, Unterlinden Museum,
Colmar
Photo: O. Zimmermann
© adagp, Paris, 2006
Friday, April 6 at 7 p.m. - Meet the Artist
Meet Sarkis at this special evening event in the galleries
Free admission for youths under 26.
Individual registration at the group sales office under
the Pyramid.
At the Bourdelle Museum
Sarkis
Inclinaison, February 1–June 3, 2007
For his exhibition at the Bourdelle Museum, Sarkis will
present a group of new works conceived to be displayed in
specific areas of the museum.
The Hall des Plâtres will house a site-specific installation
raising issues relating to sculpture and in particular the notion
of scale. The galleries located in the center of the museum will
be reserved for an interrogation exploring both sculpture and
painting. A film and an audio soundtrack created for the
exhibition will round out the presentation. Finally, Sarkis has
invited Patrick Neu and Jean-Marie Perdrix to exhibit works
alongside his own.
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