DESCENDANCE DU NUJIMMY ROBERT
The Museum as Performance
Installation / Performance
Installation
04 - 05 NOV | 10AM - 7PM | Museum
Performances
04 NOV | 4.30 PM, 6.30PM | Museum
DESCENDANCES DU NU, 2016
Jimmy Robert’s practice oscillates between various formats: photography, drawing, video, sculpture and performance, all fields he invests with his body and voice. The title of the work “Descendance du nu” is a direct reference to Duchamp’s famous 1912 painting: “Nude Descending a Staircase”. Though it caused a scandal, the painting nevertheless marked a major turning point in the history of art and made Marcel Duchamp into one of the fathers of modern and contemporary art. To this father figure, Jimmy Robert links mothers, that is to say female artists who in their own way reproduced the motif of the nude descending a staircase: Elaine Sturtevant, Sherrie Levine and Louise Lawler, all three of whom were known for lending their credibility to copies and appropriation, dynamiting questions of authorship and originality, by transforming artistic practice into an infinite recirculation of images.
Performing the history of art, a crawling body, on the ground, vulnerable and having descended the staircase for good, provokes confused feelings; at any moment, laughter is liable to become the hidden side of desire.
Support: This piece is presented with the support of Institut Français and MaisFRANÇA project, a season conceived Institut Français du Portugal with the support of Claude & Sofia Marion Foundation, JC Decaux, BNP Paribas, Mexto and Credibom.
Related
Jimmy Robert was born in Guadeloupe (FR) in 1975, He was educated at Goldsmiths College in London and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
His oeuvre encompasses performance, photography, film, video, drawing and collage, often collapsing distinctions between these mediums. Robert’s interest in how the body can be personified through materials and the reverse is a force that integrates his longtime work with performance with his larger practice.
Robert was the subject of a mid-career survey at Nottingham Contemporary in 2020, ‘Akimbo’, which travelled to Museion, Bolzano and CRAC Occitanie, Sète. His solo exhibitions include ‘Asymmetrical Grammar’, Moderna Museet, Malmo (2023), ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go’, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2022), ‘Frammenti’, Thomas Dane Naples; ‘la musique dans la chambre’, Künstlerhaus Bremen (2022); ‘Tobacco Flower’ The Hunterian, Glasgow (2021); ‘Descendances du nu’, La Synagogue De Delme, France (2018); A clean line that starts from the shoulder, Museum M, Leuven (2017); ‘Draw the Line’, Power Plant, Toronto (2013); ‘Vis-à-vis’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2012); and ‘Langue Matérielle, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2012). Robert’s performances have also been presented at Tate Britain, London; MoMA, New York and Migros Museum, Zurich. He has presented a large-scale performance at Performa 17 in New York (2017). His recent performance ‘Joie Noire’ premiered in 2019 at KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin and travelled to Kaaitheater, Brussels and Centre nacional de la danse, Pantin-Paris.