3 May – 15 September 2013
Carré d'Art, Nîmes Museum of Contemporary Art, France
To mark twenty years since the completion of the Carré d’Art in Nîmes, Norman Foster has been invited to curate a special exhibition to celebrate this anniversary – his design won an international competition for the project in 1984. The title of the exhibition is ‘Moving’ and it brings together 138 works by 66 artists from 14 countries, covering almost a 200 year period from Turner’s early nineteenth-century watercolours to contemporary video pieces.
The exhibition’s title relates to the theme of movement, both physical and spiritual – works of art that express motion, as encapsulated by Umberto Boccioni’s 1913 ‘Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio’, alongside Norman Foster’s personal selection of works that move him emotionally. New works have been specially commissioned for the show, including a sound installation by American artist Bill Fontana, a kinetic sculpture entitled ‘The Lost Compass’ by Olafur Eliasson, a monumental installation by Brazilian artist Nuno Ramos and a sequence of paintings by the German artist Daniel Lergon.
Many artists, individuals, institutions and galleries have lent works of art for ‘Moving’, including Tate London, Musée d’Art Moderne Saint-Étienne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Collection of Christopher Rothko and the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection. The Foster family lives surrounded by art and the curatorial strategy echoes the domestic arrangement of these objects, juxtaposing works from different movements to reveal shared influences and invite new readings. There is a particular emphasis on Abstraction. Norman Foster has selected a number of pieces from the Carré d'Art collection, among which are paintings by Gerhard Richter and sculpture by Juan Munoz and an early work by Cristina Iglesias. For every work by an acknowledged master such as Rothko and Serra, there are several by younger and less well known talents. In a dialogue between art and architecture, the exhibition extends beyond the confines of the galleries into the entrance space and glass staircase at the heart of the building.
A major catalogue entitled ‘Moving: Norman Foster on Art’ has been published by Ivorypress to coincide with the exhibition.
