At the approach of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games—some events of which will take place in Marseille—these questions of art’s link to sport take on a contemporary relevance that is worth understanding through all of the tools available. It is not a matter of adding more soul or offering some kind of decorative backing to the upcoming sports competitions, but rather seizing this opportunity to try to explore their nature and circumstances through the use of a number of symbolic objects that, each in its own way, help us to interpret them.
Beyond any demonstrative aim, it is about offering an event that not only supports reflection and the questioning of certain conclusions, but also inspires delight, a moment of pleasure.
Guest curator Jean-Marc Huitorel, co-curator Muriel Enjalran.
Frac Sud - Cité de l’art contemporain
Under the title The Hour of Glory (L’Heure de gloire) (Hour of Glory: a nod to Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame, as well as to the all-too-often ignored heroism of artists), one will be able to explore a motley space that will see a clash between the cult of performance and the art of losing, as well as improbable objects, and the demands of those fighting for their place and for justice—the whole bathed in the magic of literature, of laughter and tears, of formal rigor and fantasies of challenging it.
The exhibition takes us on a journey that is as lively as it is iconoclastic, bringing together monumental sculptures (Jacques Julien, Taro Izumi, Louka Anargyros...), installations (Johanna Cartier, Lieven De Boek, Thomas Wattebled...), photographs (Camille Holtz, Estelle Hanania, Elina Brotherus...), and films (Camille Llobet, Sarah Trouche, Julia Borderie...). A number of these pieces are being presented in France for the first time.
On the occasion of the exhibition Endeavours and Masterpieces, the Frac Sud is offering a new carte blanche dedicated to young artists, inviting students from the École supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence to fill the space with experiments and present their creations revolving around the theme of sport, supported by exhibition’s curator, Jean-Marc Huitorel.
Curated by Jean-Marc Huitorel and Muriel Enjalran.
Mucem - Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée
With Trophies and Relics (Trophées et reliques), we will see that both sport and art play a part in a number of beliefs—most of them very old ones mixing scholarly and vernacular forms (scholarly in their time)—and that their experience is inseparable from a set of artefacts whose effectiveness broadly depends on the faith accorded to them. Art then finds itself at the crossroads between relic adoration and the fetichism attached to contemporary objects, whether they belong to stars or to unknown people that one wishes to distinguish in this way. Here, both art and sport produce mythology.
Thus Thomas Tudoux’s works enter into dialogue with cups from the Mucem’s collection, and Fatima Mazmouz’s work converses with Marcel Cerdan’s gloves (loaned by the Musée National du Sport), while Gérard Deschamps and Bruno Peinado’s skateboards interact with those of the Mucem. Similarly, balls made by artists (Laurent Perbos, Fabrice Hyber, and others) mix with ordinary balls, and also with legendary balls like the one from the 1998 World Cup semi-final.
Curated by Jean-Marc Huitorel and Jean-Fabien Philippy.
https://www.mucem.org/
[mac], Musée d’art contemporain
Which has named its exhibition after a composition by Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition (Tableaux d’une exposition—the set of works assembled will be of the kind offered by fine arts museums: paintings of course, but also drawings and photographs. Under a guise of conventional arrangements, we find an array of objects that are often undermined. We must stress that the intention is not to illustrate some apt theme, but rather, through sport, to question certain regimes of representation, grasping the very thing that sport is liable to say about art. Welcomed outside by Stefan Rinck’s imposing sculptures, and inside by Barry Flanagan’s monumental bronze work from the British Council Collection (a partner of the project), visitors are invited to contemplatively dive into a history of modernity (postmodernity) in painting through the prism of sport. The exhibition offers small artist monographs dedicated to masters of the medium, from Guillaume Bresson to Jean Bedez by way of Mariam Abouzid-Souali, Adam Adach, Raoul De Keyser, Guillaume Pinard and Christian Babou.
Curated by Jean-Marc Huitorel and Stéphanie Airaud.
https://musees.marseille.fr/musee-dart-contemporain-mac
