Contrepoint
Musée du Louvre
Louvre Museum. 01-40-20-53-17. Until 10 february.
For its second edition, the Contrepoint initiative is ambitious and
strange: to insert in the meanders of the Louvre some works of
quite alive contemporary artists. What goes completely against the
vocation of the Louvre, sublime cemetery of art in eternal
not-evolution. Ten artists thus scattered ten work in the most
unforeseen recesses of the Museum. Jean-Michel Alberola, Christian
Boltanski, Marie-Angel Guilleminot (which presents also Absalon), Susan
Hefuna, Gary Hill, Cameron Jamie, Ange Leccia, Jean-Michel Othoniel,
José-Maria Sicilia and Xavier Veilhan chose themselves their
sites and their works, while obviously exploiting the contrasting
effects with the worthy permanent boarders. The teddy bear of
Boltanski in the Louvre Middle-Age answers the old local archaeological
excavations. Cameron Jamie tells us the festival of Halloween in
the area of Arts of Africa and Oceania. The small dog Laïka, first
animal of the conquest of space, joined the gallery of famous men by
Xavier Veilhan. Jean-Michel Othoniel pays homage to the goddess
babylonienne Ishtar, while installing, in front of her, a huge two
meters height collar, made of balls of glass of Murano in colours of
ochre and pink. The objects remain discrete but have the merit to
break a art score with a rhythm measured so perfectly.
