With Supportive by Gustav Metzger, the macLYON renews its acquisitions policy defined since its opening in 1984. Designed for and produced by the museum, these monographic exhibitions are both a problematic and a unique moment in the artist’s oeuvre, as well as being generic works*. Designed in London for the third floor of the museum, finalized and acquired in 2011, this exhibition will be installed in 2013. Supportive is the most monumental auto-creative oeuvre ever made by Gustav Metzger.
Curator: Mathieu Copeland
*A generic work, whether it is monumental or composed of numerous elements, aims to synthesize one particular aspect that is characteristic of the artist’s work, in general. The generic work synthesizes all of the artist’s previous works which it crystallizes and encapsulates in a new problematic.
Wednesday to Sunday, 11am - 6pm
On the 3d floor of the museum
The artist
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Nom de l'artisteGustav Metzger
Gustav Metzger was born in 1926 in Nuremburg, Germany. He lived and worked in London, where he died in 2017.
Born into a Jewish family of Polish origin and exiled to England in 1939, Gustav Metzger was miraculously spared the death camps, unlike his family. The artist would therefore go on to place the “borderline experience” implemented and experienced by Europe during WWII at the heart of his oeuvre, as a symbol of man’s ability to self-destruct.
More information
The Supportive Exhibition is accompanied by a collection of documents – signed letters, articles, publications and facsimiles which provide an insight into the very particular context of the history of auto-destructive and auto-creative art, since it first appeared in 1959 (Carboard Exhibition). The exhibition also includes the 5 original manifestos (1959 to 1964) gathered and exhibited together for the first time.
The macLYON has asked Mathieu Copeland to curate this exhibition. He is also overseeing an anthology of texts by Gustav Metzger that will be published by Presses du réel in February 2013.
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Titre
Auto-generated art
Supportive consists of seven 4 x 4 m screens, on which are projected the images generated by liquid crystals. Designed in a loop, according to a controlled cycle of 16 minutes and 27 seconds, the work is in constant evolution, subject to random processes. It consists of seven simultaneous images, the duration and coincidental genesis of which are impossible to record, just as it is unthinkable to imagine the future.
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Titre
Manifestos
Gustav Metzger adopted the forms of the manifesto and the conference or "demonstration".
His five manifestos: Auto-Destructive Art (4 November 1959), Manifesto Auto-Destructive Art (10 March 1960), Auto-Destructive Art, Machine Art, Auto-creative Art (23 June 1961), Manifesto World (7 october 1962) On Random Activity in Material/Transforming Works of Art, Fifth Manifesto (30 July 1964), are striking examples of the close links between the destructive nature of technology and the creative potential of science and digital media.
Catalogs
Catalogue Gustav Metzger
Date created: 07/13/2020
Changed date: 07/13/2020
De nombreux documents d'archives et textes inédits, complétés de vues de l'exposition. Préface de Thierry Raspail, essais de Mathieu Copeland (commissaire de l'exposition), Franck Popper (historien de l'art) et un entretien avec Gustav Metzger.
Prix : 15 €
Mathieu Copeland Éditions
80 pages, Edition bilingue : français / anglais
ISBN : 978-2-84066-601-1
