Infini

Bringing together some sixty works from the Pinault Collection, the exhibition "Infini" explores the elusive concept of infinity through a dialogue between two generations of artists. Pioneers of major European and American post-war movements —ZERO, Spatialism, Light and Space, among others— are brought into conversation with contemporary artists who extend, challenge or reinvent this pursuit through installations and environments that push the boundaries of art and perception. The exhibition highlights a shared aspiration: to move beyond the inherited limits of representation and open up the artwork to new experiential dimensions, both real and imaginary.

The theme of infinity runs throughout the history of art, just as it does through religion, mathematics, physics and philosophy. From the earliest civilisations to contemporary practices, artists have sought to give form to what lies beyond human experience: the immensity of the cosmos, the depths of time, the mystery of the sacred, the invisible and the unknown. At once a concept, a source of vertigo and a promise, infinity acts as a mirror of the societies that invoke it, revealing their aspirations, discoveries and utopias, as well as their anxieties. Century after century, it has raised questions about humanity’s place in a universe whose boundaries seem forever to elude us.

In the post-war context, shaped both by the trauma of nuclear destruction and by the excitement generated by scientific and technological advances, artists such as Lucio Fontana, Enrico Castellani, Fabio Mauri, Piero Manzoni and Günther Uecker embarked on a radical rethinking of artistic language. Their explorations ventured into uncharted scales, from the microscopic to the cosmic, and from the most elementary forms of materiality to the immateriality of light and space. Informed by discoveries in physics, astronomy, cybernetics and physiological optics, their works approached infinity not merely as a philosophical or metaphysical abstraction, but as a field of experimentation in its own right. "Infini" thus became an aesthetic programme through which to rethink light, movement, surface, time and space, and to devise new forms of perception.

Bringing together several historical environments alongside contemporary works, "Infini" highlights the continuity of artistic inquiry across more than seventy years of creation. Despite differences in generation, form, medium and context, the works on view form an organic whole, united by a shared concern: to rethink space as a territory for experimentation and openness. The exhibition sets out to map a constellation of diverse practices, each seeking, in its own way, to approach that which, by definition, eludes all measurement and boundaries: infinity.

Curated by Emma Lavigne, General Director and Curator of the Pinault Collection, with Alexandra Bordes, Head of Curatorial Projects, Pinault Collection.