»Things trouvé«

»Without things we would stop talking.« Lorraine Daston, Historian

Things. We are surrounded by them and we create them to find meaning in our surroundings. One example is how, when we look up at the night‘s sky, we draw a line to connect the stars into a »plausible whole« (Daston), a thing, like Wagon or Libra. Another example is how we ascribe things meaning, such as when a small plastic snow globe becomes the symbol for happily spent holidays. Some things tell a story, others may be the result of scientific progress, others inspire artworks. They also exist as reminders, as memories, as heirlooms, as souvenirs or as functional objects.

In art ordinary things gained value when Marcel Duchamp invented the readymade. Suddenly an everyday object like a snow shovel turned into an art piece, depending in which context it was presented and who had put his signature on. The concept of art was changed forever and we still deal with that modern transformation of art between cult object and artistic product. Knowing that every surrealist artist has had at least one little collection of obscure things, the question arises what is with today‘s artists. What kind of object fethish are they into? Maybe there is nothing, minimalism, but maybe there are still »surreal house[s], where eclecticism becomes compulsion, and the structure of a connoisseur‘s collection gives way to the chaos of manic hoarding and ruinous expenditure.«[1]

For our presentation at Centre Pompidou Frontviews Collective collects things - talkative and ordinary - that artists keep in their studios. Some things serve as inspiration for artworks, others are kept for sentimental reasons or used as part of the artist‘s everyday routine. We are interested in how things start to talk; as Lorraine Daston puts it:

»Talkative things instantiate novel, previously unthinkable combinations. Their thingness lend vivacity and reality to new constellations of experience that break the old molds.«

Therefore Frontviews invited Berlin-based international artists, including some members of the Frontviews collective for a ‚thing‘ from their studio, and the story behind it. The interviews are taped and presented in a video installation in the exhibition space.

Charlotte Silbermann and Rebecca Hoffmann

[1]Daston, Lorraine (Hrsg.): Things that talk, object lessons from art and science, New York: Zone Books 2004.
Dillon, Brian: An Approach to the Interior. In: The Surreal House. Barbican Art Gallery. Yale University Press, London 2010.
 

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8th and 9th of June, Wed - Thu 11am – 9pm

Performance »Me and You« by Markus Zimmermann will take place during opening hours

Museum On/Off at Centre Pompidou
Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris, France

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