27 May 2011

Our Valley, a look at the contemporary art collections of Montbéliard

Our Valley, a look at the contemporary art collections of Montbéliard

The exhibition brings together a selection of pictures, sculptures, drawings and prints from the 1950s up to the present day, draw from a collection of more than 700 contemporary works belonging to the various Montbéliard museums.

Around 100 works, most of them being shown for the first time, are being exhibited in a special itinerary: visitors are invited to discover the collection by way of aesthetic, visual and formal comparisons calling on their intuition and sensibility – art history being here broached from a different angle. Incursions by objects and works from other departments of the museum lend a new reading of these contemporary works. So a double-sided flint, an old child's bed, a bird and an insect with unlikely outlines echo and tally with a figurative canvas, an abstract sculpture, a monochrome work and a thoroughly geometric print.

Using this visual and mental track, this invitation to travel springs from 'our valley', the Doubs valley, as it happens, defended by Jean Messagier throughout his life. This desire to give the countryside back its wild and natural character is echoed in a free exhibition, keen to shed time and space, where figuration, abstraction, archaeology, the natural sciences, the fine arts, and popular traditions all rub shoulders in a quite natural fashion. For our contemporaneousness is also part and parcel of our history.

Artists: 
Valerio Adami, Pierre Aleschinsky, Arman, Jean-Charles Blais, Christian Boltanski, Vincent Corpet, César Domela, Errò, Otto Freundlich, Gérard Fromanger, Emile Gilioli, Josep Grau-Garriga, Hans Hartung, Joël Kermarrec, Piotr Klemensiewicz, Patrick, Loste, Najia Mehadji, Jean Messagier, Jacques Monory, Bernard Quesniaux, Patrick Raynaud, Jean-Michel Sanejouand, Gérard Schlosser, Djamel Tatah, Gérard Traquandi…