Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery Paris / New York – ©Marie Clerin
Rumor 2000-2004 100x235x43 cm Fabric, stuffed toys, string – Marin Karmitz Collection, Paris – Photo: Marc Domage
The stuffed plush figures look cute at first glance, but they areshaped to spell out the word “RUMEUR” (rumor), as if the toysare trying to warn us that we too are at the mercy of rumor.
Articulated-Disarticulated 2001-2002 Dimension variable – Computerized fabric automatons, ropes, pulleys, motors, cables, wooden pikes with fabric and plush toys, fabric columns and fence – Collection: Centre Pompidou, Musee national d’art moderne, Paris – Photo: Adam Rzepka
Much acclaimed at Documenta XI in 2002, this installation was areaction to the slaughter of large numbers of cattle when there wasan outbreak of BSE (mad cow disease) in Europe. Incorporatingkinetic elements, it questions the relationship between people anddomestic animals.
Annette Messager: the messengers
9 AUGUST (Sat) – 3 November (mon), 2008 MORI ART MUSEUM, JAPAN
A “message” that reaches deep into the heart. The first exhibition in Japan by France’s leading female artist
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“Annette Messager: The Messengers” is the first comprehensive solo exhibitionin Japan by one of France’s leading artists. Annette Messager uses a wide rangeof materials to create objects and installations that draw viewers into strange andfantastical worlds. In some ways, her works are incarnations of her family name –messengers on a mission to communicate something directly to the depths ofthe human mind.
Messager uses many different media and materials, including painting, photography,found objects, words, stuffed toys, fabric, and knitting. From these she createsartwork that convey from an everyday perspective the conflicting sensationsthat lie deep inside us, such as the sacred and the profane, humor and fear, loveand sadness, exterior and interior. While the use of materials such as these havebecome common in contemporary art since the mid-1990s, Messager has beenusing them since the 1970s, in works deliberately seeking to draw out narrativesfound in the individual. Recently, she has produced enormous installations withmechanisms inspired by the complexity of human beings and their puzzling abilityto nurture conflicting elements within themselves. These works have been criticallyacclaimed, and in 2005, Messager won the Golden Lion for her exhibition at theFrench pavilion at the Venice Biennale – an honor that brought her much mediaattention as well. Much of Messager’s work is on a large scale and is visuallystimulating, and appeals strongly to a wide demographic, not just to the youngergenerations.
“The Messengers” is an internationally touring exhibition, with an itinerary thatincluded the Pompidou Centre in Paris and other institutions in Finland and Korea.
Born in 1943, Messager has been creating art works since the 1960s, and has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around theworld, being a major figure in the international contemporary art scene. She represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2005, where she was awarded the Golden Lion
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