Sarkis

From the Museum's galleries to the Forum, from the Public Information Library (BPI) to the Workshop for children, from the Kandinsky Library to the Brancusi Workshop, the Centre Pompidou offers an open playing field to Sarkis to use these various spaces for a previously unseen and exceptional intervention/exhibition.

The exhibition presents a series of recent works or works created for the occasion, which are to be progressively put in place from 10 February. The Brancusi Workshop, the Public information Library (BPI), the Kandinsky Library and the Museum (level 4) open the first part of the event. On the 4th April, the exhibition then continues its display on level 5 of the Museum, before concluding and taking residence on level -1 of the Forum, from 21 April 2010.

By notably combining neon lights, video, photography, watercolour, and various materials (plastiline, glass, water, etc.), Sarkis 'disperses' his installations according to an infiltration strategy, aiming to capture the timelessness and explosion of the space, which is unique to him.

Sarkis thus appropriates the territory of the Centre Pompidou and establishes a dialogue with the Museum's works and galleries. The objects of La vitrine des innocents [The Window of the Innocents] (2005-2007) maintain a close relationship with those of the Mur de l'atelier [The Workshop's Wall] (1922 to 1966); the identical reconstruction of a wall from the workshop of André Breton in one of the Museum's modern collections' gallery (level 5). The luminous crosses of the scale model from Sarkis' workshop, Conversations entre Joraï et mon Atelier [Conversations Between Joraï and My Workshop] (2001-2002) can still be seen rubbing shoulders with the supremacist works of Kasimir Malevitch in the Museum's gallery dedicated to him. The felt of the grand ceremonial clothes created by Sarkis, such as Le printemps et la nuit [Spring and Night Time] (2000-2002) and that of the Sommeil abandonné [Abandoned Sleep] (2002), resonates with the rolls of felt from Plight (1985), the famous installation by the German artist Joseph Beuys, one of the artist's tutelary figures. A space in which the spectator is invited to slip on Oriental slippers, thus participating in the ritual imposed by the artist.