Bringing together major artworks by international artists, as well as new works from the Bernard Magrez Collection, the Institut Culturel proposes an exhibition of modern and contemporary art with the artists: Adel Abdessemed, David Altmejd, Valérie Belin, Marie Bovo, Bernard Buffet, Mircea Cantor, Johan Creten, Wim Delvoye, Camille Henrot, Bharti Kher, Yves Klein, Rachel Labastie, Sigalit Landau, Liza Lou, René Magritte, André Masson, Boris Mikhailov, Moataz Nasr, Shirin Neshat, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Paola Pivi, Martial Raysse, Germaine Richier, Raqib Shaw, Djamel Tatah, Xavier Veilhan and Yang Fudong.
With the exceptional support of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris for the loan of Les Oiseaux, le Rapace, 1959 by Bernard Buffet.
And installations in the Château’s Pavilions of the 2010 artists in residence at the Institut Culturel :
Claire Adelfang exhibits a selection of her photogra- phic work on water in the Pavilion Gallery
Guy Limone offers a new view on the ‘sleeping beauty’ city of Bordeaux in the reception Pavilion
Judith Avenel installs her bronze women’s busts in the Garden Pavilion
Artistic curator : Ashok Adicéam
Catalogue text : Paul Ardenne ( art historian )
The Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez’s new exhibition of modern and contempo- rary art crosses men’s and women’s views on Beauty, bringing forth the paradox of Beauty induced by the confrontation of thirty artworks.
Referring to Jean Cocteau’s eponymous film of 1946, adapted from a story writ-
ten in the tradition of the French literary salons of the 18th century, Beauty and the Beast invites us to reflect on the duality of Beauty, one of art’s fundamental subjects that questions the notions of otherness, of one’s reflection in the eye of another, of the identity that is built in the strange mirror of one’s kind. This observation is particularly striking in the connection the artist has with his model, who sometimes becomes the alter ego that he needs to represent himself in the world. This double often provokes ambivalent relationships of domination and subjection, avid voracity or an insatiable quest of the singularity of oneself in the other... It is one of the keys to understanding the famous Bernard Buffet painting, Les Oiseaux, le Rapace, 1959, that displays in a naked and perfect body the person who will become from then on the artist’s muse, the artist represented as a monstrous hawk that is devouring her.
Based on this artwork, this exhibition will mainly be made up of major works on loan from prestigious institutions and artists, as well as a selection from the Bernard Magrez Collection: paintings, sculptures, photos, videos and installations. An ensemble of heterogeneous media to bring light to a contemporary itine- rary of Beauty and the Beast in the salons of Château Labottière, transformed into a new space of visual poetry and emotions.
