MÉMOIRES, 2005
With Juli Susin.
On 16 February 2005, during the inauguration of the DIONYSIAC exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, the gorilla-binders loudly fashioned aluminium covers containing the anamorphic version of the Mémoires.
Rather than a thematic exhibition, DIONYSIAC is an exhibition-reflection. It proposes a state of mind, a sensibility common to the artists being presented. It gives an original form to the group exhibition and is also a point of view on contemporary art. Moreover, DIONYSIAC refers to a specific relationship between art and life, a YES that goes against resignation, that is expressed through anger and the pleasure of destruction as much as through the exaltation of life and flow, of joy to the point of excess. And, to top it all, a love of laughter, irony and a certain subversiveness, if such a thing is still possible today. Music is also at the heart of the exhibition, through a “sound room” created with the artists. The neologism DIONYSIAC, drawing both on French and English, comes from the adjective Dionysian used by Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy (1871), inspired by the Greek god Dionysus, the god of eruption and enthusiasm, of the forces of life and destruction, of all frenzies. The exhibition was accompanied by numerous events at the Pompidou Centre, including performances by the gorilla binders, Kendell Geers and Gelatin, or cinema nights with screenings by Paul McCarthy and John Bock.
