The exhibition curated by Jean Nouvel dedicated to the artist César at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art is a great opportunity to discover the works of an artist whom many know only the name and associate at least as much to the movies as sculpture. Yet it is well tread here, and the best there is. New choices bring forward two essential themes: the ground floor of the series expansions and enlargements ; in the basement of the famous cuts. The route of exposure oscillates at the rate of expansion / contraction of matter. As a counterpoint, or additional lighting, a few sculptures from the bestiary (animal type scorpions, chickens manufactured from old scrap) and in the garden, an impressive mass of compressed bales of newspapers.
cuts outlined in the basement of the highlights of the exhibition. Fascinated by the scrap yards of the Parisian suburbs and the discovery of the hydraulic press compresses Caesar cars and reduced cubes. With just a thematic point of view, we see already the interest in the waste, scrap, already mentioned here , and mutilation of the automobile as an icon of urban consumer society. It's almost at first sight of anti-sculpture, a company of destroying the work of these sculptors of modern times are the automotive designers and lines flexible and inventive in their cars. On reflection, these cuts of cars (after Milan, champions) are the same as it scraps of trash, garbage "square": used cars sent for scrap, destroyed, then as they are ingested, digested and rejected by the shredders who vomited as a kind of industrial detritus. But there are many more. From a formal point of view, the cuts really bring a new look at the sculpture.
Classical art has accustomed us to see the sculpture as the formatting outside a block of stone. The craft a sculptor like Michelangelo is to remove material until a volume whose shape takes the eye. The assemblage sculptures as Picasso or Rodin sculptures potter so enrich the initial gesture, in these cases are added, we build. But in any case, as Michelangelo said somewhere on these slaves, forms "emerge" from this area and appear on the surface of the volume.
With cutbacks, Caesar realizes precisely the opposite. Because the external form of these cuts is always the same: it is a monolith parallelepipedal whose dimensions are strictly calibrated by the width of the machine. The key is not on the surface, but inside, in the folds of the material compacted, and the look is lost in the maze of secret tunnels and dark corners formed by the crumpling of the sheet and compaction elements. Examination of these different configurations each time, under near identical at first glance, there is something really fascinatoire. It then adds a job on color, or choose a title for the work.
From this point of view it is quite strange that most of the reviews (including the catalog) are quick to remind active approach of Caesar on these productions, selecting materials, aging to final compaction. As if we were afraid that the artist is accused of "let the machine", as if he needed to apologize to no longer work solely with his hands. Besides that we have never requested such report to Andy Warhol who claimed to be a pride to let his assistants working for him, this way of "defending" Caesar seems to me a way to trivialize their work. Throughout his work, we see Caesar explore the key elements of the sculpture, the forms, materials, gestures (the expansions polyurethane foam are particularly interesting from this point of view: here the gesture is not to cut or polish or engrave, but to pay and control the flow of a substance that solidifies as and when it occurs).
It emerges from this exhibition with the belief that (re) discovered an artist intensely conceptual thought, whose ideas are embodied in works nevertheless powerfully physical, speak to the senses. This is not the least of the merits of the selection of Jean Nouvel, we can thank for making such a beautiful tribute to the man who was his friend.
Caesar, An Anthology by Jean Nouvel , Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art
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