Visiting a private art collection gives us the chance to get a little closer to the collector’s passions, obsessions, idiosyncrasies, and desires. It’s a way to look at art (and the world) with their eyes. Finally, it is also a very good opportunity to see some great artworks that are usually not accessible to the public.
Until January 30, 2022, you can see Inaspettatamente (Unexpectedly), the exhibition that showcases 315 artworks from the Frédéric de Goldschmidt collection at Cloud Seven, Quai au Commerce 7. The exhibition is articulated in 19 rooms starting from the front lobby, going to the top of the rear building, and then back down seven floors of the front building.
The exhibition is curated by de Goldschmidt himself and Grégory Lang, but we can definitely say that the presence of the late Italian artist Alighiero Boetti is everywhere so that it is impossible not to count him as the genius loci of the exhibition. Not only because de Goldschmidt owns 11 works by the Italian maestro which are displayed throughout the exhibition but also because the artworks are grouped according to topics that stem for Boetti’s works.
Each room is dedicated to themes such as Order, Disorder, Duality, Process and Delegation, Process and Work, Geological, Stellar and Human Time, Experiences of time, Scores and Sounds etc.
Organized this way, one could think that for de Goldschimdt the act of collecting is a rational and methodic one but instead the collection is way more diverse than it might seem after visiting the exhibition. Moreover, de Goldschmidt is a collector more known for his support to the young generations of artists even though in the collection we can find famous artists from the second half of the XX century.
To give you a glimpse of the artists presented in the exhibition, I will share a brief note of two rooms: the one dedicated to Disorder and the other one to the Geological, Stellar and Human Time. The rest is up to you to discover when you visit this wonderful exhibition!
The theme of disorder is exemplified by a selection of works centered on agglomeration, accumulation, on the act of piling up and stacking simple everyday objects that coming together give life to a single and unitary composition. Here we find works by Jannis Kounellis, Piero Manzoni, Dadamaino, Jurgen Ots, Marjan Teeuwen, Theaster Gates, Günther Uecker among the others.
In the room dedicated to the different facets of time experiences we find a work by Boetti, which explores the mythological dimension of time ‘Extra Strong (io sono un sagittario)’, together with a photo of a back tattooed with the constellations in the sky by Clément Cogitore.
Further more, Alicja Kwade with her superb work Transfer-Guardian gives us a very evocative representation of the geological time. For the stellar time we have a work by David Brognon & Stéphanie Rollin called Classified Moonset, a collection of seven framed newspaper clippings in which we feel the stark contrast between the poetic image of the moon with the more prosaic everyday news and chronicle.
Finally, Carlos Motta’s work Self-portrait with Death #1, is a classic reminder of the human passing of time, a topic which has illustrious predecessors, Arnold Böcklin just to name one.
A program of performances is scheduled during the opening and closing weekends. Coinciding with this exhibition is the release of Full House, a book that traces the beginnings and history of the building and collection, including an interview with the collector and co-curator, essays, exhibition views, and photographs of works exhibited.
Author: Salvatore Costantino
