Artists

Eva Jospin, Marcel Duchamp, Nam June Paik, Isa Melsheimer, Louise Lawler, Katinka Bock, Alison Knowles, John Cage, Mel Bochner, Julien Bismuth, Fabiola Burgos Labra, Céleste Gatier, Mark Geffriaud, Sadakishi Hartmann, David Horvitz, Tony Jouanneau, Toshikatsu Kiushi, Silvia Kolbowski, Godelieve Keulen, Geraldine Longueville, J.N. Mellor Club, Ariane Michel, Mai Miura, Shuji Nakagawa, Pauline Oliveros, Kyuji Onari, Michael Parsons, Hiroshi Ueda, Nina Safainia, So Andrew Saito, Yann Serandour, Mieko Shiomi, Mathieu Steinberg, Yohko Toda, William Anastasi, Irene Kopelman, Christoph Weber, Franz Erhard Walther

Press release

The works presented in this exhibition demonstrate the unique ability of artists and artisans to negotiate with contingencies (Guzenzei). They express a pleasure in the encounter (Meguriai) with the personality of materials. They invite us to pay close attention to the soul (Tamashii) of objects and their aging, to accidents, to the transformation of contexts, and to the unpredictability of living beings. These works were conceived as processes, situations, and experiences whose trajectories are deliberately uncertain.

This approach allows for a reinterpretation of the processual works that punctuated the 20th century; some, produced on-site in real-time, involve principles of delegation. Certain artists entrusted the realization of their works to third parties, aided by the expertise of Japanese artisans. These artists of contingency attach as much, if not more, importance to what happens by chance, to what is unpredictable and unexpected, as to their initial intentions.

The term “Contingency” comes from the Latin contingere, derived from contingo, tactum, meaning “to touch, to reach with the hand” but also “to happen,” “to befall,” “to occur”1. Sensitivity to contingencies is thus a way of maintaining sensitive relationships with what the present brings.