A new perspective on the collection

Spread over 1000 m², this exhibition of works from the collections includes around twenty artists and over one hundred of their pieces from the 1960s to the present day. This selection, which reflects a variety of disciplines (painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture), gives pride of place to works including large-scale installations by Mac Adams, Alain Kirili, and the duo Aurélie Pétrel and Vincent Roumagnac. Donations of large collections of works also enable the museum to present monographic exhibitions focusing on the careers of several little-known figures who each, in their own way, strove to reinvent the language of painting and sculpture: Bernard Joubert (1946), Charles-Henri Monvert (1948-2018), Lena Vandrey (1941-2018), and Max Wechsler (1925-2020).

These rich additions to the collection sometimes serve to increase the number of works by certain artists, and sometimes to provide additional material on key concepts such as geometric abstraction or contemporary photographic or sculptural practices.

2. Exhibition view BRAND NEW! recent gifts to the collection (Left : Viswanadhan, right : Alain Kirili), MAMC+, 2024. Photo A.Mole - MAMC+

The collection in motion: expanding narratives, filling gaps

A museum collection is never static, it is a living, evolving entity shaped by acquisitions, donations, and curatorial choices. The responsibility of a museum is not only to preserve but also to question, reinterpret, and enrich its holdings. Each new work introduces a new perspective, fills a historical void, or challenges existing narratives.

In recent years, MAMC+ has actively sought to rebalance its collection by prioritizing artists from underrepresented regions, particularly non-Western artists. This effort was reinforced after the 2022 "Globalisto" exhibition, which highlighted the necessity of a more polyphonic and inclusive art history. The recent acquisition of Velu Viswanadhan’s "Sans titre" (1983) is a direct result of this commitment. By integrating his work, the museum strengthens its representation of Asian artists while also engaging in a broader reflection on the intersections of identity, materiality, and abstraction.

Simultaneously, the collection grows through the addition of contemporary artists whose practices explore the shifting nature of images, perception, and memory. The work of Éléonore False, for instance, embodies a dialogue between photography and sculpture, exploring how images can be manipulated, fragmented, or reimagined in three-dimensional space. These acquisitions contribute to a broader conversation about the materiality of images, a theme particularly relevant in our digital age.

3. Exhibition view BRAND NEW! recent gifts to the collection, MAMC+, 2024. Photo A.Mole - MAMC+

Threads of light, color, and memory

Certain works in BRAND NEW! seem to speak to one another, forming unexpected echoes across time, medium, and geography.

Take, for example, the work of Velu Viswanadhan and Charles-Henri Monvert. While they come from vastly different backgrounds, Viswanadhan, born in Kadavoor, Kollam, who moved to Paris in 1968, and Monvert, a French painter deeply immersed in conceptual approaches to color, both artists share an almost scientific fascination with the act of seeing and optical art.

Viswanadhan’s 1983 triptych, created with natural pigments sourced in India and bound with casein, possesses a luminous, almost alchemical quality. The color is not merely applied but activated by the medium itself, creating a sense of shifting transparency and opacity that mimics the fluidity of perception.

Monvert, in contrast, imposes a strict system upon his colors, as seen in "162 Couleurs" (1997-2000). Using a pre-established palette from an Old Holland color chart, he methodically applied each shade one after the other. And yet, despite this rigor, the result is vibrantly dynamic, a chromatic rhythm that unfolds like musical notation, each color vibrating against its neighbors. If Viswanadhan’s work suggests the organic movement of light through space, Monvert’s operates like a coded language, a rationalized yet poetic investigation into the infinity of hues. Both artists, in their own ways, transform color into a structural force, one that is at once personal and universal.

This interplay between structure and fluidity is also evident in the delicate yet compelling work of Max Wechsler. His "Minuscule" series (1999) deconstructs letters, once carriers of meaning, fragmenting and reassembling them into an abstract, almost geological surface. Through a meticulous process of photocopying, enlarging, and adjusting the intensity of black and white tones, Wechsler creates a meditative experience in which the act of seeing becomes a form of light excavation.

4. Exhibition view BRAND NEW! recent gifts to the collection, MAMC+, 2024. Photo A.Mole - MAMC+

If Wechsler’s work demands close attention, drawing the viewer inward, Armando Andrade Tudela’s "Hard Times, Hard Techno" (2022) operates in the opposite direction. His sculptural assemblage, composed of construction materials, industrial textiles, and a resin-cast head, speaks to the persistence of forms and histories that refuse to disappear. The mannequin’s hooded face, placed precariously within the composition, evokes both anonymity and ritual. The tension between the found materials, some marked by labor, suggests a meditation on memory, displacement, and the traces of human presence left behind in objects.

This exploration of absence and persistence is carried even further in Bernard Joubert’s photographic portraits of André Cadere. Taken just weeks before the artist’s passing in 1978, these images capture Cadere with his signature round wooden bar, an object that, much like Tudela’s salvaged wood pieces, embodies both a formal aesthetic and a deeply personal history. In some images, Cadere appears fragile, his body marked by illness; in others, he is animated, engaged in a final act of artistic defiance. The camera does not simply record; it preserves, prolongs, and transforms his presence into a visual echo that reverberates decades later.

Together, these works remind us that art is never static. It is built upon layers of material, of history, of vision each one shaped by what came before and by what remains unseen. Through them, BRAND NEW! is not merely a showcase of new acquisitions but an invitation to look closer, to decipher the silent narratives embedded in form and color, and to rediscover what we thought we already knew.

Informations about the exhibition

Place: MAMC+
Date: 9.11.2024 – 9.3.2025
Curators: Alexandre Quoi
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the MAMC+

Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole
Rue Fernand Léger
FR - 42 270 Saint-Priest-en-Jarez

© Lucas GASGAR / Lucas Art Talks 2025