Christodoulos Panayiotou
LUX S.1003 334
© Orsay vu par Christodoulos Panayiotou © Musée d’Orsay, 2019 / Sophie Crépy, Courtesy of the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris/London ©
© Orsay vu par Christodoulos Panayiotou © Musée d’Orsay, 2019 / Sophie Crépy, Courtesy of the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris/London ©
© Orsay vu par Christodoulos Panayiotou © Musée d’Orsay, 2019 / Sophie Crépy, Courtesy of the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris/London ©
Produced by Musée d’Orsay
With generous support from American Friends Musée d’Orsay and Kamel Mennour
In parallel with the joint invitation made to him by the Festival and the Musée d’Orsay, Christodoulos Panayiotou brings us the LUX S. 1003 334 exhibition. It stems from his performance piece Dying on Stage.
These two projects share a common theme: the passage of time.
Encompassing a wide variety of forms, including sculpture, painting, photography and installation, the work of Christodoulos Panayiotou reveals the hidden stories concealed in the visual and material traces of history and time. For the purposes of this project, he turns his attentions to the complex temporal inscriptions present in a body of works lying at the heart of the museum’s collection. Conceived, both by himself and in collaboration with others, this body of works enables him to delve deeper into his original intention, that of consolidating duration. The Musée d’Orsay, this museum of the origins of modernity, gives visitors the impression that it has somehow always been there – and yet it was only opened in 1986. It covers the period from the second half of the XIXth century to the start of the XXth century, an era which saw the consolidation of the museum as an institution. Christodoulos Panayiotou’s work plays upon the relationships between the various eras, and the way in which different materials inform our perception of time.
Drawing upon the time he spent in the museum in the working alongside its conservation and restoration teams, a period lasting several months, the project conjured up by the artist touches upon the very substance of the museum’s inner workings: preservation, the writing of history and the symbolic organisation of value in time. Indeed, the title of the exhibition sheds light upon an inscription on the back of one of the museum’s masterpieces, Auguste Rodin’s sculpture, La Pensée, and for which Christodoulos Panayiotou has created a plinth. The latter bears a hallmark, thereby putting into perspective an element of its materiality and potential lifespan.
Amidst dust and restoration, masterpieces in history and unfinished works, the exhibition that Christodoulos Panayiotou has devised takes us on a journey punctuated by a series of correlations. In a deeply contemporary way, he brings to the forefront the mechanisms and uncertainties of the passage of time, celebrity and history.
------
A project by Christodoulos Panayiotou
In collaboration with Donatien Grau, contemporary programs advisor
------
Full list of works: Here