A tour of the disturbing exhibition Avant l’orage in Paris with Emma Lavigne, director of the Pinault Collection.

Since 2021, Emma Lavigne has been the executive director of the Pinault Collection and its three museums: Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Punta della Dogana and the Paris Mercantile Exchange. An art historian, he organized landmark exhibitions such as Elles, Christian Marclay, The Clock and Pierre Huyghe., organized at the Pompidou Center in Paris. Before the Storm, presented at the Bourse de Commerce, is one of them. against the backdrop of climate change, it encourages the viewer to change their perspective.

Miss Figaro. – “before the storm» Is the title of the exhibition a warning?
Emma Vine.– We are simultaneously before the storm, during the storm, after the storm… It is a warning, an invitation to awareness. It also means that there is still time to change some things. The sun may return shortly after the storm. It is a metaphor that shows how shadow and light can combine in our relationship with nature, the living landscape. We are not only in the shade, new buds can sprout.

In the video, the Chanel exhibition, Marion Cotillard and Carole Bouquet at the Madame Figaro microphone

So is there hope?
This is what American anthropologist Anna Tsing calls “third nature.” According to him, creating worlds is not only for humans, the stories of species are intertwined. Like these Japanese mushrooms, paste which grow in degraded areas, in soils degraded by human activities. Like other forms of life, man must come together to survive, he is not alone in the world. We are no longer in a romantic or hierarchical relationship with nature. This osmosis of man and his environment has been subverted. There may be new forms of beauty in this world that need to be taken care of with great urgency. We have to think about new ways.

“The sound of tropical rain is heard on the stairs, of which we do not see the slightest drop.”

La Rotonde was commissioned by artist Dan Waugh. What does it represent?
Tadao Ando’s concrete cylinder in the Rotunda will become a dark garden. Under the huge glass roof, the architecture of the trade exchange appears as a kind of greenhouse where Dan Vo imagined the mutating landscape where he interweaves, as often in his work, different stories. He uses tree trunks and branches that have been downed, uprooted or weakened by bad weather, bracing them with wooden structures to restore verticality. He invents a hybridization between nature and culture, grafting sculptures and objects onto this devastated forest.

What work will be installed on the stairs?
There is the sound of tropical rain on the stairs, the slightest drop of which we do not see. We hear the water running A hundred years of loneliness By Gabriel García Márquez. This voice work, It’s raining (2012), creates climate, attention. In the works of Dominique Gonzalez-Foster, rain is very frequent. It will rain from February to September, reflecting our climate concerns…

What do you represent? Pierre Huguet ?
A Way in Untill restores soil, compost, chaotic growth, depicting the world as lived by non-humans, from insects to dogs. Pierre Huguet has established himself as one of the leading figures in questioning the relationship with non-humans in art. This video work is a space in the making, it opens up the possibility of breaking new rituals to share the state of plants and all living things around us. In this film, we can follow the excitement of a dog called a man, the performance of bees, rodents, other forms of life… It is laissez-faire that interests the artist.

It is important to change your perspective.
The issue of point of view and perspective is essential. All artists who try to get closer to animals have a common denominator: a less anthropocentric view of the world. Man is not at the center of all other forms of life. Each artist in the exhibition has invested the space that we have entrusted as a landscape. Some works are environments. A large room is dedicated to the American artist Diana Teter, who is one of the pioneers of ecology issues. We show Chernobyl (2011), which was filmed in the vicinity of the factory. The device immerses the audience in the heart of the irradiated architecture. This dirty area is being returned to wild life. horses are free there, for example… We balance between ecological disaster and life force.

“Artists overcome threats”

You are displaying a masterpiece from the Pinault collection, The Coronation of Sesostris (Part III), 2000 by Cy Twombly…
It is a symbolic work, a variation on Pharaoh’s mysterious journey and race for the sun. The series also depicts the transition from day to night. Cy Twombly’s cyclical dialogues with Daniel Stiegman Mangran’s works, a few branches, simple small cut leaves, testifying to the great fragility of the world and placed by the artist in precarious situations, suspended between thin threads. Like Cy Twombly’s sun, they seem to be constantly changing.

Each artist in the exhibition has contributed to the space we have entrusted as a landscape

Emma Love

Another immersion offered by Hicham Berrada…
Video installation Prediction (2018) immerses the viewer in the mutant universe. The artist invents new forms of beauty. Metals and waste are immersed in the aquarium and under the influence of toxic substances, they are transformed and seem to come alive like a coral reef.

Aren’t there many things bordering on beauty and danger?
Artists transcend threats, invent new real or imaginary spaces, possible rebirths. We are taken in a cycle, a kind of grand choreography. We almost have to consider that there are no longer four seasons, but now more, each of which allows us to reinvent our relationship with the world, with the climate. I am interested not only in exhibiting works, but in offering new art experiences to the public.

“Before the Storm” season around works from the Pinault collection, until September 11, at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris. pinaultcollection.com