Dimanche sans fin
, Maurizio Cattelan & the Centre Pompidou collection

To mark its 15th anniversary, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is transforming all of its galleries to host hundreds of works from the Musée National d’Art Moderne collection. These include rarely seen pieces—sometimes thought untransportable—such as André Breton’s studio wall or Marcel Duchamp’s chess table.

The exhibition explores the theme of Sunday in its social, political, and aesthetic dimensions. Curated collectively under the guidance of artist Maurizio Cattelan, the exhibition unfolds as a poetic journey through 27 sections, each conceived as an alphabetical entry of thoughts, verses, slogans… touching on themes such as the division between leisure and work, private and public space, spirituality and light, or art’s power to imagine alternative worlds and evoke melancholic reflection.

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is decking out its entire exhibition area – the Grand Nave, the Gallery 1, the Gallery roofs, and all its nooks and crannies – with hundreds of works from the Centre Pompidou collection.
Since it first opened, the Centre Pompidou-Metz has had the honour of displaying many works from the Centre Pompidou collection. To celebrate this rich partnership, this exhibition shows rarely exhibited works and pieces that nobody even knew were in the collection, drawing special attention to the many movements in art history. There are majestic presentations of works including André Breton’s extraordinary studio wall and Marcel Duchamp’s chess board table (a recent addition to the Centre Pompidou collection).
 
The exhibition addresses the concept of Sunday, a subject evoking many notions, sparking many associations for the collective of curators gathered together by artist Maurizio Cattelan. This theme raises social, political and aesthetic issues of significance in today’s society.
It addresses for example the division between time devoted to leisure and work, private and public arenas, spirituality, light and the potential of art to imagine alternative worlds ad offer melancholic meditations.
 
It has been divided into 27 sections to be deployed like an alphabet book, similar to the one by Gilles Deleuze. Each section bears the title of a slogan, or a line from a poem, novel or song – B for “Bats-toi” (“Fight”) or Q for “Quand nous cesserons de comprendre le monde” (“When We Cease to Understand the World”). The 27th section is named after a new letter or symbol, invented for the exhibition. Starting from this directory of thoughts, inmates from La Giudecca women’s prison in Venice wrote texts inspired by these 27 titles, lending pace to the circuit, and emphasising that artistic transmission knows no frontiers.

A selection of paintings, sculptures, installations and films from the Centre Pompidou collection strike up a conversation with works by Maurizio Cattelan, ranging from his first pieces, such as Stadium, a giant table football game, through to his more recent creations such as Comedian and his monumental Felix. The circuit opens up to a timeline spanning much more than the 20th and 21st centuries, with the presence of Gradiva from the Vatican Museums, showing the force of the sources of ancient myth as inspiration for modern and contemporary art.
With a nod to the architectural lines of the Centre Pompidou-Metz designed by Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines, the scenography is designed by duo Berger&Berger, transforming the galleries into a tumult of poetic experiences that take the form of different worlds beckoning visitors in for a stroll.

https://www.centrepompidou-metz.fr/en

Maurizio Cattelan, “Comedian”, 2019
Courtesy, Maurizio Cattelan’s Archive. Courtesy Perrotin. Photo: Zeno Zotti