Launched as part of the FIAC private tour, the 14th edition of the Guerlain exhibition dedicated to contemporary art welcomes 21 international artists on the Champs-Elysées until November 14. This year’s theme is “When Matter Becomes Art”, and features a new presentation of NFT-certified digital works.
“It’s a really rich theme, which seemed to me to be a favourite subject for this year“, explains Caroline Messensee, the curator of the exhibition. By choosing this theme, the Guerlain house is asserting the alliance of art and nature, by presenting tangible works that take us back to raw, primary and concrete matter. The incorporation of digital and immaterial works offers another point of view on the relationship between art and matter. Finally, for Guerlain, it is also an opportunity to reaffirm the essential link between nature and perfumery, a way to reaffirm its identity.
The artists chosen this year were chosen for their importance on the international scene, but also for the media they can use. “We are always keen to show the contemporary art scene in all its diversity, which is why we are presenting sculpture, painting, photography and video, so that it corresponds to the current art scene,” explains Caroline Messensee.
The case of German artist Dana-Fiona Armour is particularly evocative, especially in her approach to art and matter. With her work Haut und Knochen, exhibited at Guerlain, the artist imagines a hybridization between the human and the object, putting them on the same level. In this work, the organic mixes with the rigid forms of minimalism and conceptual art. Her work can even be likened to a fusion between medicine, science and art, as she has already collaborated with researchers and doctors on some of her projects.
In addition, this year’s major innovation is the inclusion of digital works. This reflects Guerlain’s desire to maintain a certain curiosity and to present the public with something new and innovative. “It is a desire on our part not to close ourselves off to what is new and not fully known. We worked with an expert in the field, Benoît Baume, who helped us choose the artists to discover because they evolve in an exciting universe.”
Laurent Moffatt‘s digital work, entitled ”Compost VIII 2021”, is part of this conception of the new place of digital works. It is taken from a series that explores the cycles of blossoming and decomposition in nature in which different ecosystems are linked by movement and human behavior. To make the viewer feel this way, the artist uses augmented reality, video and virtual photography, which also allow her to make visible how the processes of the natural world are reflected in the imagination and in the digital environments we inhabit. Disorder and indeterminacy are two feelings that dominate Laurent Moffatt’s digital works.
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Featured photo : © Maison Guerlain
