7/28/2019 Flashes from the Cartier Foundation, 1999

1/2

Flashes: Contemporary Trends from the Cartier Foundation

Flashes is spotlights the work of 26 artists from the collection of the Fondation Cartier

in France. Before moving its present home in Paris, the Cartier Foundation had its

headquarters in Joy-en-Josas, where the sculpture garden and studios offered artists

the chance to workin situ on individual projects. Such an exhibition a show of works

from a corporate collection is necessarily fragmentary, and exposes the purchasing

strageties of the concern in question. The Cartier Foundation that had also given us

the exception exhibition of photographs by Francesca Woodman earlier this year is

now housed on the Boulevard Raspail in Paris, in a building designed by Jean

Novelle. The Foundation supports ongoing working relationships with the artists in

which it invests: an eclectic group not selected neither in accordance with stylistic or

period preference. As there is no physical site where all the works in the collection arepermanently gathered and exhibited, the works from the Foundation circulate in

international exhibitions such as this one.

The particular selection was made for the Lisbon venue, curated by Herv Chands,

the present curator of the collection, together with Margarida Vieiga, director of the

Centro Cultural de Belm in Lisbon. Focussing in particular on installations or

photographic works, the exhibition establishes a loose grid of connections between

the selected artists. The outcome of this selection is uneven. At its best arguably, inthe strong selection of works by Matthew Barney; in the idiosyncratic drawings and

sculptures by Marcus Raetz, in the well known series of photographs, the Ballad of

Sexual Dependency, by Nan Goldin; or in the recent video piece by Bill Viola the

exhibition is both visually and intellectually challenging. The connections say

between the works of Vija Celmins, Thomas Ruff and Tatsuo Miyajima, or between

Jeff Wall, Yukio Nakagawa and Thomas Demand; or between Nan Goldin, Wolfgang

Tillmans and Nobuyoshi Araki are loosely drawn rather than didactially forced

upon the viewer.

But some of the works o show seem to serve simply as tokens for a collection of so-

called big names. This is especially the case in the scrappy installation by Tony

Oursler, the overstated steel submarineby Panamarenko, and the inexplicable

emphasis given to Raymond Hains, claimed in the catalogue to be one of the greatest

contemporary artists today. The exhibition is strongest in its focus on photographic

works: if Gabriel Orozco and Jeff Wall are under represented, Wolfgang Tillmans and

Nobuyoshi Araki both of whose work sometimes slips dangerously into the realm of

the glibly fashionable here look disturbing and compelling. Sophie Calles three

7/28/2019 Flashes from the Cartier Foundation, 1999

2/2

photographic works always exploring the fine edge between narcissism and fiction

simply whet the appetite for more, as do David Hammons quirky three works using

a combination found materials in witty ways that query the relationship between the

mainstream and the marginal.

Ruth Rosengarten

Flashes: Contemporary Trends from the Cartier Foundation

Centro Cultural de Belm, Lisbon.

Published in Viso, (?) July 1999.