Centre Pompidou presents ‘The Promises of the Past’

Neša Paripovic
Photographie du tournage du film NP 77
© Goranka Matic
Courtesy of the artist et BelgradMuseum of Contemporary ArtThe film NP 77 belongs to thecollections of the Centre Pompidou,Paris

Anri Sala
Dammi i Colori, 2003
video, colour, sound., 15’24’’
Collection of the Nantes Art Museum
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Crousel, Paris

Centre Pompidou presents ‘The Promises of the Past’ From April to July 2010, Centre Pompidou presents “The Promises of thePast,” a transnational, transgenerational exhibition featuring works by morethan fifty artists, many of them from Central and Eastern Europe]]>

Source: Centre Pompidou
The exhibition title picks up the expression used by German philosopherWalter Benjamin (1892–1840) in his analysis of history as a succession ofdiscontinuous events. The countries of Eastern Europe are conspicuousexamples of this phenomenon.

This exhibition examines the former opposition between Eastern and WesternEurope by taking a fresh look at the history of the communist bloc countriestwenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The aim is twofold: firstly, toshow the work of artists who are not well known in France but whose workhas left a mark on their native countries; secondly, to elucidate the manifestinfluence of tutelary figures from Central and Eastern Europe on the younggeneration of international artists.

Indeed, many contemporary artists, from former Communist countries and beyond, have picked up practices thatcharacterized artistic currents in Central and Eastern Europe and have been significantly inspired by themovements and themes developed there. Witness, for instance, the discreet performances by Roman Ondákwhich are very close to the performances by Július Koller and Jiří Kovanda in the 1970s. Many artists on thecontemporary art scene have reinterpreted the architectural heritage of the communist period: this is the casefor likes of David Maljković who breathes new life into Vojin Bakić’s buildings and of Cyprien Gaillard whodocuments the current state of these architectural vestiges. The exhibition highlights the work of some of themost emblematic artists of the former Eastern bloc, underlining their influence on the international scene.Alongside such well-known artists as Sanja Iveković, Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos and Edward Krasinski,the French public will be discovering a number of artists for the very first time.

One hundred sixty artworks in all mediums are on view in the Galerie Sud of Centre Pompidou in an originalexhibition layout by Monika Sosnowska (Poland). In Espace 315, documents from the archives of the formerCommunist bloc are presented in an exceptional installation by Tobias Putrih (Slovenia).There will also be documents retracing the history of artistic exchanges between Paris and Eastern Europe aswell as films by artists and documentaries on their performances.

The exhibition is structured around seven main themes: “Beyond modernist utopias”; “Fantasies of Totality”;“Anti-art”; “Micro-Political Gesture – Poetic Gesture”; “Feminine – feminist”; “Public Space – Private Space”;“Utopia Revisited”. At the Same Time, the show strives to challenge the very notion of art history as a linear,continuous series of events, as it was conceived throughout the modern period, shifts the focus in the processto the notion of discontinuity.