In resonance with the passage of the Olympic flame, the Fondation presents in the famous building of Frank Gehry, “The Collection: A Sports Meeting”. A selection of works from our Collection is on display at the second level of the building. In their polyphony, they offer a poetic and offbeat look around the theme of sport. From Galerie 9 to Galerie 11, the works of five French and international artists are brought together.
The spectacular installation Walk on Clouds, 2019 by Abraham Poincheval (born 1972) shows, in Gallery 9, the artist walking through the cloud canopy. Suspended in the void, he appears supported by a hot air balloon equipped with drones to film him. The projected film results from this performance. This one demanded of the artist a total commitment of the mind and the body, and a taking of risk such that this wandering seems to be as much a dream as a sporting feat.
In Engadin, 1995, by Andreas Gursky (born 1955), the grandiose spectacle of the Swiss mountains dominated by an intense blue sky imposes itself in a panoramic vision full of sublime. The man, represented by a thin line of cross-country skiers, disappears in front of the power of nature and seems to exist only in his determination to face it.
In Gallery 11, the installation by Roman Signer (born 1938), Installation mit Kajaks, 2003, highlights kayaking, an important part of his plastic vocabulary since the late 1980s. Usually associated with the idea of movement and speed, the boat suspended from the ceiling is deprived of all utility but then acquires a status of sculpture that magnifies it.
The work of Omar Victor Diop (born 1980), Diaspora, unfolds as a gallery of portraits around African figures who, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, played an important role outside their continent of origin. Costumed and staged, the artist embodies them all, thus sweeping the history of the genre, from miniature mogul to European court paintings. A red card, a ball, goalkeeper gloves, a whistle, these unexpected accessories - symbolic details of the sports world -, divert the codified appearance of the characters.
The will of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) to make exist «the invisible man» and his fascination for the heroes, is expressed recurrently in his works. In this pantheon evolve boxers like Sugar Ray Robinson or Mohammad Ali. Napoleonic Stereotype Circa 44 (1983) evokes another boxer, Joe Louis, whose hitherto victorious career was tarnished by a highly symbolic defeat in 1936 against the representative of Nazi Germany, Max Schmeling.
The official emblem of the Olympic Games - five circles representing the five continents - serves as a motif for Warhol, who produced several works on this theme in collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat. In Olympic Rings, 1985, the geometric initials of the rings are repeated in painting by Andy Warhol (1928-1987), while Basquiat’s intervention strikes by the imposition of a black face in the center of the composition. An outstanding work of the exhibition “Basquiat x Warhol, à quatre mains”, shown in 2023 at the Foundation, this loan (Enrico Navarra Editions Collection) was exceptionally extended to celebrate the Olympic Games in Paris.