Bodies at stake, MO.CO.

Artworks from Sandretto Re Rebaudengo collection

In a city of knowledge and medecine, it’s a poetic of the human figure that explores the new exhibition at the MO.CO. Hôtel des collections. 30 artists seize this subject and demonstrate the fact that the image of the body is also the image of the psyche.

The body is political, social, sexualized, fantasized, performed, controlled. It’s the reflect of our fears, of our aspirations, of our time; its representations depict celebrated bodies, probations, challenged bodies, in which technological developments allow making exoskeletons and artificial corporality, and in which the body becomes stretch and adjustable over and over again, but stays an indicator of differences. 

The representation of the body goes through the whole history of art. How the current artists, following Michel Ange, Rubens, Courbet, Alberto Giacometti or Francis Bacon (to mention only few artists who work from the flesh) appropriate the idea of the body? How to depict the human being nowadays?

At MO.CO. Hôtel des collections, 58 artworks created between 1977 and 2020 take possession of the body. This is not a matter of showing autopsied bodies, but to conceive an accurate examination of the human figure such as it is represented by the artists, the body as a means of expression, experimentations, and formal and esthetical research, inextricably tied up with social, political and cultural evolutions.

Most of the artworks are shown in France for the first time. The exhibition includes a large variety of mediumsThe self-portraits (Cindy Sherman, Roberto Cuoghi, Catherine Opie, Maurizio Cattelan) reveal a divided personality; the deformed bodies without a face are feminist (Zoe Leonard, Sarah Lucas, Senga Nengudi, Berlinde de Bruckere), the collective body explores the mechanisms of oppression and control (Cady Noland, Thomas Hirschhorn, Wael Shawky), historical figures and modern icons like Zinedine Zidane (Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon) deconstruct the society of spectacle. 

Among the key works of the exhibition, we have to mention an ensemble of paintings by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, considered one of the most important painters of her generation but little shown in France, the video Hisser (2015) by Ed Atkins, a tragic animated film about the human condition, the impressive installation of 15 meters long, Ingrowth (2009) by Thomas Hirschhorn and finally the film Zidane. A portrait of the 20th century (2005) by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno.

The scenography of the exhibition is delegated to Diogo Passarinho Studio. He reconfigures the circulation and the rooms of the exhibition in order to propose a new and sensual experience during the course inside it treating walls like fleshes. 

A bilingual catalogue is published by Silvana Editoriale. Richly illustrated, it brings together interviews of the art collector Patrizia Sandretto re Raubeuengo and of the choreographer Michele Rizzo about their relation with the body in the creation of the collection or works of art and critical texts by Julie Ackermann, Marie Applagnat, Angela Blanc, Jean-Baptiste Delorme, Marilou Thiebault, Justine Vic...

2021 Montpellier, FR

Artistic team: Vincent Honoré, Head of exhibitions MO.CO., and Caroline Chabrand, Curator MO.CO.

Exhibition Architecture by Diogo Passarinho Studio 

Team: Diogo Passarinho, Lea D'Albronn Allexandre, Dario di Turi and Gonçalo Reynolds

Artists: Avec Bani Abidi, Ed Atkins, Lina Bertucci, Maurizio Cattelan, Ian Cheng, Roberto Cuoghi, Enrico David, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Michael Dean, Trisha Donnelly, Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno, Thomas Hirschhorn, Sanya Kantarovsky, Josh Kline, Elena Kovylina, Barbara Krueger, Zoe Leonard, Sarah Lucas, Mark Manders, Nathaniel Mellors, Senga Nengudi, Shirin Neshat, Cady Noland, Catherine Opie, Laure Prouvost, Michele Rizzo, Waël Shawky, Cindy Sherman, Andra Ursuta, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Dates: 13/11/2021 - 13/02/2022