1. Rhythmic Space. Ten Pillars - © Musée d'art et
d'histoire de Genève, photo: Stefan Altenburger
When the sun goes down and the moon comes up: when darkness evokes the classic of Swiss Art
In French we say "jamais deux sans trois", thus the third "Carte Blanche" of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of the city of Geneva is curated and assembled by the internationally celebrated Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. Since the 80s the artist as presented his work all around the globe, from Berlin, Paris, Venice, and in Geneva with his permanent sculpture at the Place des Deux-Églises in Onex.
Most of his works are colourful, sometime using natural elements such as rocks, but also writing to convey a deep, sometimes political message but always poetic. Thus, his work alternates between the spectacular and the mystical, the natural and the artificial, and the grandiose and the humorous.
With the use of well-known object and practice, the artist don't want the viewer to focus on the object, but the relation he had with it and its immediate environment: the room, other works, and the body and mind of the viewer.
A new way to curate
But as a curator, Ugo Rondinone is not the same. When the current director of the museum, Marc-Olivier Wahler started the concept of the "Carte Blanche" he had one goal, to rediscover the MAH’s collection from new angles, create connections between eras, artists and customs, and crystallise new and unusual aesthetic experiences.
During the last two carte blanche in 2022 and in 2021 the artists and curators never included their work in the exhibition, first because they we're not artist or because they didn't want to interfere with the museums history. This time, Ugo Rondinone and his works are an integrate part of the concept, some of them are quite known while other we're especially created for the occasion of the exhibition.
Like all "Carte Blanche", Ugo Rondinone had to choose a theme, a line, a red line or an important message to convey through the whole exhibition. But contrary to the last two exhibition, the artist has decided to use two important and symbolic Swiss painters: Felix Vallotton and Ferdinand Hodler to introduce the viewer to the exhibition. With these classical figures and his works, Ugo Rondinone tries to ask a few questions to the visitors: What happens when artistic freedom, creativity, and interpretation are introduced into the museum institution? When do the very building and its architecture come into play and become magnified in the public’s view as a result of the artist’s eye? How can a place and an artistic practice, which depend on objects, resonate together while proposing transformations (on the museum or artistic level)?
To answer this question, Ugo Rondinone as designed a free-flowing exhibition, when you enter the hall a visitor can choose to go right, towards the galleries dedicated to the work of Hodler, or to the left, to enter into the world of Vallotton. To accentuate those road, Ugo Rondinone uses the concept of " Romanticism", like it's stated in the press dossier: "Romanticism fascinates Rondinone because of the role it grants to our irrational side, on the flip side of our conscious life: the world of the night, of dreams, fantasy and imagination are validated and expressed, and the artist decisively takes hold of them to uniquely recontextualise both the work and life of his two predecessors. "
By creating this storytelling, Ugo Rondinone as create two apartments with the architect Frédéric Jardin. In each of the apartment, one dedicated to each artist they use objects of the museum and modern technology to create a new life to Mr. Hodler and Mr. Vallotton as fin-de-siècle dandies, secret and refined, whose relationship is queer.
Romanticism is also linked to nature and perspective, two words that evoke the works of Hodler and Vallotton. On the first hand Hodler create landscape with an infinite horizon line, sometimes with the use of the sun and the reflections of natural elements, on the other hand Vallotton is more focus on the sunset, the feeling of movement of the sun, the environment, the end and the start of a new journey to create an "ideal" world. In dialogue, Ugo Rondinone placed some of his creations such as the figures of Rondinone’s nude dancers, who are made of wax and soils from different surfaces of the world, the windows he tinted like a cathedral, etc.
Ugo Rondinone
Before diving deeper into this exhibition, it's deeply important to present the artist. Ugo Rondinone is a Swiss born artist working with different mediums such as drawing, video, sculpture, installation or even slogans, which aims to multiply the possibilities of expression.
All of those kinds of expressions were strengthened by his long relationship with John Giorno. With him he learned sound poetry and the American avant-garde, which he redefined by making one of his most popular work "seven magic mountains" (2016) installed in the desert of Nevada. By redefining the American landscape, the artist recomposes the space around them and around the viewer.
Félix Vallotton
After you enter thought the sculpture "the moon" from 2022, a sculpture made out of silver which represents a "passage" into the exhibition, the viewer is invited to explore a series of engraving by the Swiss artist titled "Intimacies". In this series he explored the relationships of couples and plays with the themes of betrayal, secret, and closeness with the other. Being close door, those scenes explore the definition of the secret, the reverse side of the visible, and they hint at what is hidden behind appearances.
In the next room, the artist is represented by a series of still life and landscapes, which echo the same room of the landscape of Hodler, situated at the exact same place on the other side of the building. In these paintings you can see the notion of time, of landscape and the motif of Romanticism. To add to this picture, Ugo Rondinone decided to present a group of seven nude dancers which are made from wax mixed with different soils collected from across the world. Each of these bodies can also be defined as a landscape, a configuration of earth and material, informed both by the artist’s practice and the nature of the body.
The next room presents the private apartment of the artist, in which the objects and the antique furnitures are all coming from the museum collection. These spaces are not an exact representation of the apartment of the artist, but they are based on a "dandy interior" inspired by Jori-Karl Huysmans’ novel "Against the Grain" published in 1884.
Thus, it's a bit like a "cabinet de curiosité" where you can find paintings by Alexandre Perrier, drawings by Adolphe Appia, a sculpture by Simone Tallichet, engravings by Arnold Bocklin, archæological pieces, antique furniture and objects and even precious fabrics coming from all around the world. In this room the touch of the artist is quite small, he only designed the wallpaper of the rooms, which are inspired by from Victorian tapestry motifs but also from male silhouettes and bodies from the museum’s collection.
The last room of the Vallotton apartment is "The Waterfall", in which are presented well-known and lesser-known works of the Swiss painter on a pedestal which mimics the exact dimension of the work, thus the paintings are floating into the space of the museum. On the other side of the pedestal, you will find copies of the sketches the artist made to create this works. In this work, the fragility of the human body responds to the theme of war presented on the other side of the hall by the pictures of Ferdinand Hodler.
Ferdinand Hodler
Now, let's cross the hall of the museum and go on the right side where you enter into the apartment of Ferdinand Hodler. In the first room titled "Ten Pillars", Ugo Rondinone offers us a personal reinterpretation of the work of Ferdinand Hodler, a major figure in Swiss modernity whose art is marked by the themes of life’s fragility.
Thus, the visitors are welcomed by a series of imposing martial figures and large paintings of Swiss warriors, presented on a pedestal, thereby transformed into sculpture. Like the room of works by Felix Vallotton, the other side of the Pedestal is composed of sketches and preparatory drawings of the picture, which show the pathways and detours of creation, all leading to the solidification and inspiration on canvas.
After this first imposing room, Ugo Rondinone and Frédéric Jardin has designed a second apartment for Ferdinand Hodler, in which works by Albert Trachsel, drawings by Auguste Baud-Bovy, porcelain pieces, fans, watches, and other objects that are transformed into a graphic and visual lexicon, perhaps representing the inner life of the artist. Like the other space, every works you see are part of the museum collection, aside the wallpaper which was designed by Ugo Rondinone.
The next hall is dedimated to the paintings of Holder depicting the Lake of Geneva and the lake of Thun, in which Rondinone added a group of Glass horses made in 2020. Beside the group of beautiful works by Hodler, showcasing the lake, the mountains and the Swiss landscapes, the artist has places a group of horses, all of them blue and filled with water coming from all around the world, thus evoking nature and the lake enclosed into an environment made out of animals, trees and liquids.
The last space dedicated to Hodler presents a series of seventeen drawings that Hodler devoted to the agony of Valentine Godé-Darel, his mistress and muse.
The different kind of interventions
Beside the works of the museum, Ugo Rondinone designed rooms for himself. The first one titled "Three Steps" present a work developed in three rooms, first a series of small paintings titled "Diary Paintings" made from 2005 and 2012 as an hommage to some of his mentors such as Hodler. Around this paintings you can find tree enormous works made out of natural elements.
The other kind of installation arrives when you are in a room dedicated to the theme of temporality. The space is titled "Before an Invisible Hand Opens the Door" and it present at series of clocks and engravings of Adam et Eve. The combination of the two and the sound insulation of the artist create a cinematographic experience in which you focus on the sound and quality of everyday object, which most of the time we forget it was designed and crafted by someone, for the whole world.
Suddenly, in the same room a door open into a world of colour. Inspired by the big windows of the facade of the museum, Ugo Rondinone as created a group of works made out of colourful stained glass in which he recreates the geometric shapes of the windows.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: MAH
Date: 26.1.2022 – 18.6.2022
Curators: Ugo Rondinone and Frédéric Jardin
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the MAH
Rue Charles-Galland 2
CH-1206 Genève
Phone: +41 22 418 26 00
Mail: mah@ville-ge.ch