A l’envers - Sens dessus dessous avec la collection du Centre Pompidou

With “À l’envers, sens dessus dessous avec la collection du Centre Pompidou,” Mucem and the Centre Pompidou invite visitors to turn their gaze upside down. Traces of making, hidden gestures and invisible sides of works: the exhibition explores what we never look at and what nevertheless says so much about creation.

From popular objects to modern and contemporary works, the reverse side becomes a space of revelation, invention and subversion. Showing the back, exhibiting in reverse, overturning norms: gestures that reveal creative processes and question our visual habits. From Paul Gauguin to Vassily Kandinsky, from Surrealism to contemporary creation, the exhibition moves through avant-gardes and traditions of the “upside-down world,” where chance, accident and détournement open up new paths. The Centre Pompidou will celebrate its 50th anniversary at Mucem. For the occasion, the exhibition will bring two major institutions into dialogue and offer a unique sensory and intellectual experience, where turning works around means rethinking the museum itself.

Centre Pompidou Collection

From Marcel Duchamp to Vassily Kandinsky, Pierre Burajglio, Ghada Amer and Jean Tinguely, the Centre Pompidou collection shows how the reverse side becomes a powerful engine of creation. Presented from the front and the back, André Breton’s Wall of the Studio is a highlight, revealing the backstage of a Surrealist universe.

Mucem Collection

The Mucem collection reveals everything that the front conceals: gestures, uses, techniques, mechanisms, intimate stories and social conventions. Reversible clothing, shadow puppetry, fairground targets, molds, devotional objects and images of the “upside-down world” tell another story of objects through their hidden sides.

Lenders

MAC VAL - Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée national Picasso-Paris and the Musée de Grenoble.

Featured artists Ghada Amer, Yto Barrada, Georg Baselitz, Neïl Beloufa, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Pierre Buraglio, Sophie Calle, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Luciano Fabro, Paul Gauguin, Laurent Goldring, Philippe Gronon, Susan Hefuna, Rebecca Horn, Vassily Kandinsky, Anish Kapoor, Bouchra Khalili, Yves Klein, Annette Messager, Piet Mondrian, Bruce Nauman, Giulio Paolini, Pablo Picasso, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely.