Membership guided tours
Contemplating dark times with the Masters of Chiaroscuro
From Monday 16 to Saturday 28 March and from Monday 15 to Saturday 27 June
The present can be read and observed through the eyes of the great masters of chiaroscuro, whose works form a firmament for later generations and act as true seismographs of their time: from Francisco de Goya to Pablo Picasso, they have pictured the disasters of the world through painting. tIn the works of Sigmar Polke, Victor Man, and Philippe Parreno, presented in the exhibition "Clair-obscur", these references remain latent, underpinning their dark visions of history.
At the heart of the exhibition, an apocalyptic landscape unfolds: wars, cataclysms, and ecological disasters seemingly foretold by Yves Tanguy, like a prophet, and echoed in Pierre Huyghe’s dystopian work. A radiography of the earth is revealed, its surface marked by traces and impacts, through the works of Trisha Donnelly and Frank Bowling. Yet behind the terrifying apparition staged by Bill Viola, the Sublime emerges, inviting us to envision the light of another humanity.
© Bill Viola Fire Woman 2005 Video/sound installation: high-definition color video projection; four-channel audio with subwoofer (4.1) 580 × 326 cm (screen) 11 min. 12 sec. Pinault Collection
Strange Hybrids: composite narratives of Humanity
From Monday 13 to Saturday 25 April
After the Second World War and the trauma of the Shoah, the question of figuration, of what can be represented, became crucial. If, as Theodor W. Adorno famously stated, “to write poetry after 1945 is barbaric,” painting faced the same impasse.
How can form be given to a humanity that has negated itself? In response, some artists chose to elide the figure, turning towards gestural and lyrical abstraction. Others, such as Jean Dubuffet, sought inspiration in the archaic materiality of the ground, while Alberto Giacometti attempted to grasp the essence of a body or a face by reducing forms to their bare minimum. Artists like Germaine Richier and Alina Szapocznikow went further still, merging human forms with other species to create hybrid beings. These mutations are unsettling and surreal. Bruce Nauman and Robert Gober lead us into the hidden dimensions of our existence, towards the invisible and the undesirable aspects of human essence.
© Alina Szapocznikow Sculpture-Lampe XII c. 1970 Colored polyester resin, light bulb, power cord 63.5 × 35.6 × 19.7 cm Pinault Collection © Adagp, Paris, 2025
Contemporary archaisms and the rites of times to come
From Monday 11 to Saturday 23 May and from Monday 6 to Saturday 18 July
“There is a secret affinity between the archaic and the modern […]. It is in this sense that one can say that the entry point to the present necessarily takes the form of an archeology”, writes Giorgio Agamben in What Is the Contemporary?
This “secret affinity,” whose meeting point lies in origins (arkhê), reappears in enigmatic landscapes and the emergence of hybrid entities. Artists such as Saodat Ismaïlova, as well as Danh Vo and James Lee Byars, extract signs and fragments that they interpret as traces of mysterious rites, either forever extinguished or temporarily suspended, awaiting reactivation by a new humanity. Meanwhile, Laura Lamiel presents objects displayed in vitrines as clues to be deciphered, as the remnants of a scene or a site to be inhabited. Drawing inspiration from the prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan, she reminds us that there is more information to be read “between objects than on the objects themselves,” inviting us to observe these passages from darkness to light.
© View of Laura Lamiel's studio, work in progress © Adagp, Paris, 2025 Photo: Florent Michel / 11:45 a.m.
