Eye Contact

The thematic exhibition Eye Contact (Les Yeux dans les Yeux) has a title that speaks volumes: over half of all the work in the Pinault Collection centres on the human form. In exploring this theme, the artists present us with our fellow creatures — real or imaginary — and free them from the march of time. Almost 90 oeuvres from the Pinault Collection have been selected for this exhibition, which invites visitors to confront a multitude of faces head on. These gazes and demeanours reveal tensions, emotions, feelings, love, personal histories, rebellions and sometimes violence. Each of the portraits conveys a message, and each is a landscape to be explored while looking them in the eye. This exhibition spans the history of art, speaking to us about how we relate to the image of ourselves and the other in the age of social media. In addition, it explores the idea of disappearance and the impossibility, on occasion, of capturing a face, an expression, a spirit, a demeanour, a soul. Masked glances mingle with candid gazes, and intimacy ends up brushing against eternity. Artists such as Xinyi Cheng, Nan Goldin, Damien Hirst, Annie Leibovitz, Yan Pei Ming, Shirin Neshat, Irving Penn, Cindy Sherman, Luc Tuymans and many others challenge the representation of the self and the other, inviting us to reflect on the individual and contemporary society. Nearly half of the works are being exhibited for the first time by the Pinault Collection to celebrate this event.

To complement this event, the Pinault Collection is lending an outstanding selection of work by Claire Tabouret to the Rennes Museum of Art in a simultaneous exhibition devoted to the French artist from June 14 to September 21.

With : Giulia Andreani, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Arébénor Bassene, Michaël Borremans, Camille Blatrix, Miriam Cahn, Xinyi Cheng, Paolo Costa, Zoe Crosher, Marlene Dumas, Lizzie Fitch, Llyn Foulkes, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Rochelle Goldberg, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Rachel Harrison, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Peter Hujar, Sanya Kantarovsky, Kiki Kogelnik, Michael Krebber, Florian Krewer, Tetsumi Kudo, Annie Leibovitz, Monica Majoli, Victor Man, Jean-Luc Moulène, Shirin Neshat, Antonio Oba, Albert Oehlen, Orlan, Yan Pei-Ming, Giulio Paolini, Irving Penn, Raymond Pettibon, Pierre & Gilles, Pope L., Richard Prince, Andy Robert, Wilhelm Sasnal, Thomas Schütte, Cindy Sherman, Edward Steichen, Rudolf Stingel, Paul Strand, Alina Szapocznikow, Claire Tabouret, Marion Tampon-Lajarriette, Tatiana Trouvé, Luc Tuymans, Francesco Vezzoli, Carrie Mae Weems, Lynette Yiadom Boakye, Zhang Huan.

Curator : Jean-Marie Gallais, Curator, Pinault Collection.