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EXHIBITION
From 8 October 2005 to 8
January 2006
Opening
on Friday 7 October 2005
>
From 10h to noon
: private opening
>
From 20h to midnight
: public opening
Robert Malaval, Guignol's Band, 1977
>>> Download the press kit (1Mo)
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A Great Exhibition, wich sheds light
on the work of ROBERT MALAVAL, in LYONS and in PARIS,
> 1st salvo : Biennale d'art
contemporain de Lyon
From 14 September to 31 December 2005
> 2nd salvo : Palais de Tokyo,
site de création contemporaine
From 8 October 2005 to 8 January 2006
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TO EXHIBIT MALAVAL IN 2005
Showing the work of Robert Malaval today at the Palais
de Tokyo and the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon
testifies to both a committed choice and a bias that run resolutely counter
to the prevailing mood. It amounts to taking a stand to defend the work of
a capital artist who has been neglected—even forgotten—by
the art history of the last quarter century. The
creator of a French version of Pop Art, Malaval is one of the few
artists of the 1960s and ‘70s to have integrated rock culture
into his work. Science fiction also fascinated him and runs throughout his
art, from his first Aliments Blancs (or White Foodstuffs) in
1961 right up to the Vortex Pastels in 1978. A hero of the
underground, Malaval was by turns an unpublished writer,
a Pop dandy who admired and was akin to the Rolling
Stones, a hippy who saw the world in “pink,
white, mauve,” a pioneer of glam rock who painted with glitter,
and an inventor of a punk aesthetic, before throwing himself, like a kamikaze
of a future without a future, into the whirlwind of death by his
own hand.
A great
enthusiast of sound, he purloined noises all around him to fill his
shows and endlessly fed his painting with the music he loved. At a time when
electronic cultures and the developments of rock are profoundly influencing
a new generation of artists, it is essential that we shed new light on the
oeuvre of Robert Malaval to show the relevance today of an artist
who could sum up the years of French Pop all by himself, and whose
brutally unexpected death in 1980 will never overshadow his vibrant presence.
Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans
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"ROBERT MALAVAL, KAMIKAZE"
Robert Malaval’s life, uncompromising, made up of moments of searing
intensity and transports of utter delight, seems in retrospect driven by a
single breath, a divine wind as the etymology of the word “kamikaze”
puts it. It is a wind that has continued to blow uninterrupted after the artist’s
death and whose traces can be read on the face of his work, right down to
the telling double series Kamikaze fin du monde (Kamikaze end of the
world, 1975) and Kamikaze Rock (1979). Today, 25
years after the artist’s death, Robert Malaval, kamikaze at the Palais
de Tokyo and at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de
Lyon bears witness to the artistic attacks that Malaval led head
on, constantly expanding his art into the use of new supports and pushing
his desire and creativity into all the interstices of our world.
Robert Malaval in front of the Maison des Arts de Creteil,
1980
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DOUBLE SALVO FOR AN EXHIBITION
The show Robert Malaval, kamikaze that the Palais de Tokyo
is presenting this fall is made up of two complementary parts,
in Lyons and Paris. The exhibition will testify to the artist’s
abundant creativity, his capacity to renew his language, and the great variety
of means he employed to affirm for over two decades his many-sided personality
and his constant desire to both surprise and reinvent himself.
Malaval so despised
habit and repetition that he always mistrusted the well-beaten track, loved
to transform himself completely, and quickly grew bored once he knew how to
do something. Discovery interested him, the unknown,
the unexpected encounter. His entire oeuvre is made up of these breaks
with the past. We hope to offer a clear account of that with this exhibition,
by combining the areas of his activity while rendering them free and autonomous.
The aim is not to say and show everything there is to be said and shown of
the artist’s work; rather, the idea is to make subjective choices,
to “take a stand” and to bring out certain stages of the artist’s
evolution, instances that are highly significant of the complexity and rich
diversity of his approach. Two institutions, the Palais de Tokyo
and the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, will
host the first major exhibition devoted to Robert Malaval:
a double salvo in honor of a kamikaze of art.
Robert Malaval, Sans Titre, 1980
> For further information about the Lyons exhibition
> For further information about the Paris exhibition
General
Curators : Nicolas Bourriaud et Jérôme Sans
Commissaire de l'exposition : Marc Sanchez
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THE CATALOGUE
For Robert Malaval, kamikaze, a reference work will take stock
of the artist’s life and oeuvre.
Richly
illustrated, this reference work on Malaval chronologically presents,
from the late 1950s to 1980, over 160 works in color reproductions.
These are put in perspective with the artist’s own words and numerous
unpublished documents from the period.
A preface by
Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans,
the directors of the Palais de Tokyo, is followed by a presentation of the
exhibition by Marc Sanchez, the show’s curator.A
biography by Jean-François Bizot, a journalist and
founder of the magazine Actuel, features an account of the life and evolution
of the artist.
A text by the art critic and curator Vincent Pécoil
offers an historic analysis of Malaval’s body of work.
Design: deValence.
The cover of the exhibition catalogue
Technical File :
Format:
26 x 20.5 cm, 280 pages.
Cloth bound hard cover.
Approx. 250 reproductions (including 160 works reproduced).
Copublication: Palais de Tokyo / Paris Musées. Distributed by: Paris
Musées
ISBN 2-87900-928-6. Retail price: 44 euros.
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The
Partners of the Exhibition
The
exhibition is produced with the collaboration of LVMH
/ Moët Hennessy . Louis Vuitton
And
the
collaboration of Climespace
The
exhibition is produced with the collaboration of Société
Ricard,
L'Officiel des Galeries, Paris
Art
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The Media
Partners of the Exhibition
**************************************************
At
the same period:
Saâdane
Afif
“Lyrics”
08 Oct > 20 Nov 05
Sarah Morris
“Endeavor
[Los
Angeles]”
08 Oct > 08 Jan 05
Rebecca Bournigault
“La
chambre
interdite”
08 Oct > 20 Nov 05
Valéry Grancher
“Shiwiars”
Sept-Oct 05
Nobuyoshi Araki
"Arakinema"
08 Oct > 23 Oct 05
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Permanent
partnership
With the
support of Porter Novelli,
Public-Relations Consultants
**************************************************
Communications Manager
Sofianne Le Bourhis
assisted by Mylène Ferrand
Tél : + 33 1 47 23 54 57
sofianne@palaisdetokyo.com
Press Contact
Tél : + 33 1 47 23 52 00
presse@palaisdetokyo.com
Palais de Tokyo,
Site de création contemporaine
13, avenue du Président Wilson
F - 75116 Paris
Tél : +33 1 4723 5401 & +33 1 4723 3886
Fax: + 33 1 4720 1531
www.palaisdetokyo.com
>
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