Visit to Sarah Sze exhibition 'Night into day' at Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

A SPIRIT NOW LONDON EVENT

• With Leanne Sacramone (Senior Curator at Fondation Cartion pour l'art contemporain, curator of the exhibition)

• And Johanne Legris (International communication and VIP treatment Manager)

Online event: 17 March 2021

Introduction written by Johanne Legris (International communication and VIP treatment Manager)

Published by Spirit Now London

Good morning everyone.

I am Johanne Legris, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain’s Internal Communication and VIP Treatment Manager, I would like to speak to you briefly about the Foundation as a Parisian and worldwide institution and our exhibition program before giving the floor to our curator Leanne Sacramone.

Leanne is going to speak to you about Sarah Sze, the internationally renowned American artist, and give you a virtual tour of her current exhibition at the Fondation in Paris!

It’s a real pleasure to have been invited, let me start by thanking Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre very warmly for asking the Fondation Cartier to participate in this webinar.

Marie-Laure has, for several years now, been a very enthusiastic and active member of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain’s circle of patrons and friends, a private club called Vivre en couleur (Living in full colour).

We’re very pleased to have her as an international ambassador for our contemporary art foundation.

I would also like to thank all Spirit Now London's members and our guests for joining us today.

In these challenging times, we know how important it is to organize this new type of digital conversations and moments around artists.

The Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain is a private cultural foundation created by the Maison Cartier in 1984 and was established in Paris when it launched its innovative contemporary art exhibition program.

The Foundation was founded by Alain Dominique Perrin (President of Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain) and is conducted by Hervé Chandès (General Director of Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain).

The Foundation is very multidisciplinary and explores topics that extend beyond the visual arts. We try to plunge visitors into uncharted territories!

Since 1994, The institution is located in the heart of Paris. The Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain offers an exciting program of contemporary art exhibitions in the 1 200 square meters of exhibition space in an architecturally groundbreaking building designed by France’s star architect Jean Nouvel.

The transparent glass exhibition spaces open out to a large garden and provide a unique space for artists to create and present their works.

As a result, the building is in perpetual metamorphosis according to the time of day or night. Every project provides new possibilities for reinventing the space.

Since its creation, in 1984, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain adopted founding principles that still define our cultural program today driven by constant spirit of inquiry and curiosity:

• Encourage artistic creation and exchange and in particular emerging artists.

• Favour an international and multidisciplinary approach.

Forever innovative, we like to foster unusual and unexpected encounters between artists, scientists, philosophers, musicians, and architects from around the world.

We often ask artists to create site-specific works and installations, such as Sarah Sze’s piece on the ground floor, and they also meet with the public. Alongside our many events, all this ensures a very stimulating environment for everyone.

The specially commissioned works of art are then acquired by the Foundation and thus continue to enrich the collection.

Thanks to these many interactions and acquisitions over the last 35 years, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain has assembled a unique contemporary art collection, which continues to develop over time.

Today the Collection contains 2 000 works by 500 artists with 50 different nationalities

As you can see, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain embraces incredibly diverse forms of creativity: the visual arts, sciences, architecture, design, fashion, and cinema.

It also engages with environmental, anthropological, and scientific concerns, which has led to a number of very interesting exhibitions.

Let me briefly mention 3 of them here:

• The Unknown Quantity exhibition in 2002, which the Fondation Cartier conceived together with the French philosopher and urbanist Paul Virilio;

• The Native Land exhibition in 2002 about migrations due to climate crisis, deforestation, and endangered languages.

• The Mathematics, a Beautiful Elsewhere exhibition in 2011, which encouraged encounters between mathematicians and artists, and institutions like the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the European Space Agency.

And more recently with The Trees exhibition in 2018, bringing together a community of artists, botanists, and philosophers, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain echoes the latest scientific research that sheds new light on trees.

Claudia Andujar, The Yanomami Struggle in 2020: was the largest exhibition to date dedicated to the work of Claudia Andujar. For over five decades, she has devoted her life to photographing and protecting the Yanomami, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous group.

Moreover, always keen on engaging with many different audiences, we succeeded in sharing the fantastic photographic work of African photographers: Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibé.

And appealed to architecture connoisseurs with Junya Ishigami from Japan and Freddy Mamani from Bolivia.

We also introduced visitors to the world of design with designers such as the Australian star designer Marc Newson.

We also took the time to share little known aspects of the work of Agnes Varda, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Patti Smith, and David Lynch…Not forgetting all the others.

The Foundation’s resolutely international approach makes us travel all the time as we go all over the world to meet and foster relationships with artists, institutions, and diverse audiences from many different cultures.

We organize many travelling exhibitions which have been seen in many cities worldwide, including in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Seoul, and Shanghai.

Just like the close relationships we develop with artists (Remember, we’ve been working with Sarah Sze 20 years ago) and facilitated by the close relationships we’ve created with many of the world’s most prestigious establishments.

In Europe, we’re particularly cooperating with the Triennale di Milano, the design and art museum in Italy, Triennale di Milano and the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain have joined forces with an eight-year partnership for a jointly curated program of exhibitions and live shows in Milan.

We launched our partnership in October 2020 with the exhibition Claudia Andujar, The Yanomami Struggle,

If the sanitary measures allow it, we will open in May 2021, Les Citoyens, created by Guillermo Kuitca. The Argentinian artist will show art by 28 artists from the Fondation Cartier collection, exploring the idea of collectives, groups, communities, partnerships.

The exhibition should take us on a journey to the heart of the Fondation Cartier’s unique collection through the eye of an artist.

In China, we have close ties with the Power Station of Art in Shanghai since 2018.

TREES PSA, Shanghai

This summer, the Power Station of Art and the Fondation Cartier will present the exhibition Trees. With more than 200 artworks by more than 30 artists from China, Latin America, India, Iran, and various countries in Europe, the exhibition celebrates trees as a major source of aesthetic inspiration for mankind.

Trees aim to reveal the beauty and biological diversity of these heroes of nature, which are today being threatened by large-scale deforestation.

Such long-term partnerships are a key part of the Foundation’s international strategy.

Our program of exhibitions and events also includes the Nomadic Nights, which we’ve been holding annually since 1994, and during which we invite artists from the contemporary scene to fill the Fondation Cartier’s exhibition spaces and garden for one night.

The Nights of Uncertainty bring together artists, scientists, and intellectuals, where artists and those who think and dream together (The Honey Night, The Bat Night, The Clouds Night). Our guest speakers engage in conversations with the audience on topics related to the current exhibition, its actor, and questions raised.

With the pandemic situation, the Nomadic Nights, turned live, we have developed ambitious specific digital projects with live-streamed events around Performing arts, concerts, talks, but also encounters and Rendez-Vous with our New Publications online (ArtBook series), but also around our Programmed exhibitions (temporary closed) such as the New Augmented reality Application around Sarah Sze’s work, and more recently a new online project celebrating Artavazd Pelechian through a digital project dedicated to the life and work of the legendary filmmaker.

You can discover all these online projects which are available on the Fondation Cartier’s website and our Social Media.

The Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain has asked British artist Damien Hirst to show his newest paintings this summer, in an exhibition called Cherry Blossoms. The result of three years of intense work in his London studio, the Cherry Blossoms series is a pinnacle of Hirst’s lifelong exploration of painting and his desire to return to the pure immediacy of this medium and its role in his artistic practice.

We are all the more thrilled by the prospect of dedicating a personal exhibition to Damien Hirst because Cherry Blossoms marks the artist’s first museum exhibition in France.

Thank you all very much for your attention. I enjoyed telling you a little about the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, and I hope you enjoyed learning about it.

I will now give the floor to Leanne Sacramone, the curator of the Night Into Day exhibition that we’re showing in Paris right now. Unfortunately, however, this exhibition is temporarily closed due to the pandemic situation, but we hope that you will all have the opportunity to come to Paris very soon to see it in real life!

Thank you and see you at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain very soon!

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