Avec et sans peinture — Exposition des œuvres de la collection — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 15, 2014 → July 5, 2015

Avec et sans peinture (With and without painting) reveals the diversity of contemporary painting by grouping works according to common themes. These themes function like the beginnings of different narratives one might like to follow or perhaps guess at through the image itself. The public is invited to make up its own stories over the course of this exhibition arranged in seven chapters: color as subject; the medium is painting; the line, the fold, and painters’ actions; fire, destruction and creation; storytelling and fiction: narrative painting; the surface as subject; and the chemistry of materials or chance at work.

In total, over 130 works by over 60 artists of different generations employing several techniques will mark the course of the exhibition and enter in dialogue with one another, posing questions, responding, accenting or contradicting over the course of the year.

Vue de l’exposition Avec et sans peinture. Au premier plan, Charles-Henri Monvert. Au fond, Peter Stämpfli, Sabro 1, 1989 — 1990 Collection MAC/VAL — Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne. © Adagp, Paris 2014. Photo © Marc Domage

This period will also be punctuated by three specific events in a space dedicated to the presentation of three unique artists.

Intime¹ will honor the place of American artist Ida Applebroog in the French art scene through exceptional loans from French collectors. This summer, works by Valérie Jouve and Halida Boughriet, two artists in the MAC/VAL’s permanent collection, will offer a different counterpoint to the exhibition. Together, these three artists will provide contemporary perspectives on composition, figures, and time.

Avec et sans peinture, the sixth exhibition of works from the MAC/VAL’s permanent collection, emphasizes the very origins of the collection itself — the first works acquired by the Departmental Fund for Contemporary Art were paintings.

Although it has been important since then to diversify this collection in terms of singular artistic gestures and the representation of different media, it is ultimately pertinent and illuminating to return to painting in the new realities of its current state.

Vue de l’exposition Avec et sans peinture. Au premier plan, Alain Jacquet, Bulldozer, 1967 Collection MAC/VAL — Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne. © Adagp, Paris 2014. Photo © Marc Domage

The MAC/VAL collection came into being thanks to a policy of supporting artists established on a departmental level in 1982. By focusing on French art from 1950 to the present, the MAC/VAL strives to reflect the singular reality and diversity of the French art scene that is otherwise underrepresented in other public institutions. This focus resonates with the work of artists from beyond France working in residence at the MAC/VAL or being honored in its temporary exhibitions. Since the museum’s opening in 2005, five different exhibitions have offered the public original circuits through the permanent collection (“Je reviendrai” in 2009, “Nevermore” in 2010 and “Vivement demain” in 2011) organized on themes chosen to promote dialogue between different generations of artists upon subjects of local concern in the Val-de-Marne, or beyond, in Europe and the world at large.

¹ Associate Curator: Nathalie Parienté