Press release

«Dramatically Different»
Exhibition from October 26, 1997 to February 1, 1998
Curator : Eric Troncy

John Armleder, Angela Bulloch, César, Sylvie Fleury, Katharina Fritsch, Dan Graham, Duane Hanson, Swetlana Heger & Plamen Dejanov, Jim Isermann, Sarah Jones, Pierre Joseph, On Kawara, Jeff Koons, Mike Kelley, Bertrand Lavier, Louise Lawler, Larry Mantello, Allan Mc Collum, Paul Mc Carthy, Sarah  Morris, Ugo Rondinone, Tobias Rehberger, Alain Séchas, Haim Steinbach, Lily van der Stokker, Andy Warhol

Dramatically Different tries to keep a healthy distance from the dogmatic and predictable model of the theme-based exhibition, preferring an ambiguous endeavour that blends critical thinking with blind passion and objectivity with subjectivity, by introducing the possibility of the accident.

In this sense, Dramatically Different is closer to the model of the labyrinth, which invites the onlooker to get lost in a gravitating motion around the Anglo-Saxon concept of "Display". These display strategies are neither evidence - this is arguable, by the way - of the "mercantilization of the world", nor a symptom of the "aestheticization of the world" (to borrow Jean Baudrillard's expression). They are based on the exponential demiurgic nature of things and deeds, and the onlooker's almost mechanical ability to decipher it. They become all the more meaningful nowadays when artists have re-debated certain established facts about the work, hailing from past decades.

- Firstly, its autonomy which may still be assured, but is no longer systematically desired and is in no way a sine qua non condition, anyway;

- Its decorative function, which means that it occurs in areas hitherto looked down on by design;

- Its capacity to bring about pleasure, by owning it, handling it, and looking at it, too;

- Its not insignificant status as a consumer commodity;

- Its sanctification, which nevertheless puts it alongside other stimuli, some more intellectual than others, other creations, if you will, and other languages hitherto deemed base;

- The demands of its presentation, which can no longer resort systematically to the white cube;

- Its gravitas, which, to be effective, now just needs to don a suit;

- Its political character, which cannot rely exclusively on a principle of denunciation;

- The eminently private character of its relationship with the onlooker.

Dramatically Different is not a collection of works that might bolster these new arrangements of the artwork expressed by artists who, incidentally, are not necessarily young - if you are keen to explore Andy Warhol's world, for example. It is more an "exhibition of works" that already exist, borrowed, apart from a handful, from public and private collections in Europe and the United States. It embraces and, in the end, benefits from this renewed debate about the attitude people may adopt with works of art. It is a debate that draws its strength from artists' experiences and by they themselves may not necessarily be present in the show.

For "Les Ateliers du Paradise" in Nice (1990), Pierre Joseph, Philippe Parreno and Philippe Perrin devised a temporary habitat that included works by Angela Bulloch and Andrea Schulze, and Ron Arad's furniture..., Rirkrit Tiravanija, for his show at the Consortium (1996) used works from the collection as a setting for his own show, and in so doing he did not necessarily comply with the conventions governing their presentation. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's "Moment Ginza", shown at the MAGASIN in Grenoble this summer, conjured up an avenue in Tokyo, in the form of an urban area occupied by the works of Maurizio Cattelan, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, etc., which took on a dual function: decorative and symbolic.

What could be more normal, having put forward the work no longer as a previously conceived finished product but as an open and unfinished device without the presence - if not the intervention - of the onlooker, than that it also encompass and lay claim to its status as symbolic furniture, and encourages its simplified use.

The Dramatically Different experiment takes place over a chaotic itinerary, where each room marks a stage, changing without meddling with the level of meaning; it involves the onlooker in chequered reflection; and it invites him/her - and why not? - to re-assess his/her own behaviour in front of the work, and in the work.

Eric Troncy