THE THIRD MIND Carte blanche to Ugo Rondinone until January 3rd

Giving an internationally renowned artist "carte blanche" is a key idea that emanates from the director of the Palais de Tokyo, Marc-Olivier Wahler. Placed at the centre of the decision-making process determining the programming of the Palais de Tokyo, the artist is free to concoct an entire exhibition. His or her vision is given an auspicious setting and sufficient time to develop into a visual arts world that is always unique. As well as offering a kind of map of the artist's brain, desires and influences, giving carte blanche to an artist provides an opportunity to approach the processes of creation and aesthetic cross-referencing from a novel angle. Artists are never where we expect them to be. They look at our reality, our everyday life, but also the works of their contemporaries, in a unique and enlightened way.

THE THIRD MIND /

With THE THIRD MIND, Ugo Rondinone offers us a unique journey. An MRI scan of his influences, inclinations and obsessions, the exhibition is constructed as a stroll through a brain in perpetual activity, going straight to the source of the artist's references and discoveries. For the first time his gift for building systems of connections – an aptitude which has made Ugo Rondinone famous – is placed at the service of the works of other artists, not his own. The systems of connections activated as well as the artists and works chosen make THE THIRD MIND an exhibition that no curator/art historian would ever have been able to dream up.

William S. Burroughs, the cult writer of the Beat Generation, and the artist Brion Gysin worked out the cut-up method which consists of cutting up and reassembling various fragments of sentences to give them a completely new and unexpected meaning. The Third Mind is the title of a book they devised together following this method; they were so greatly impressed by its contents that they felt it had been composed by a third person, a third author, a synthesis of their two personalities. 1+1 = 3. In homage to this book which was never published, Ugo Rondinone sets out to cut up and remix the contemporary artistic landscape to allow a new meaning to emerge from it. THE THIRD MIND, composed from the assembled works of thirty-one different artists, constitutes a fully fledged work in its right, a new, spectral work created by a third mind, a third artist, the product of the meeting between Ugo Rondinone and his selections.

Closing our first season which started a year ago, THE THIRD MIND constitutes the final episode in a train of thought exploring territories that are as disconcerting as they are heterogeneous, but are nonetheless united by one and the same idea : getting shot of the "window vision" of art, which regards exhibitions and works as fixed points in time and space. Each episode of this first season integrates the notion of programming conceived of as a cursor, and is set in a scenario based on the multiplication of interpretations, the decompartmentalization of intellectual and aesthetic categories and the constant questioning of the bridges between art and our reality. From an open space (FIVE BILLION YEARS) to a private space (THE THIRD MIND), from a proposal put forward by a curator (Marc-Olivier Wahler) to the visions of an artist (Ugo Rondinone) by way of artist curators (Peter Coffin and Olivier Mosset), from collective exhibitions to solo exhibitions, the year ends with an exhibition where – as in the first episode – every work is inscribed in a whole that is greater than its parts, so contributing towards founding a paradoxical identity that is strong yet elusive. Thus this first season will have seen the very concept of the exhibition – and the entire Palais de Tokyo along with it – slipping, changing, metamorphosing and relentlessly questioning the "schizophrenic quotient" of art.


Artists of the Third Mind:
Ronald Bladen · Lee Bontecou · Martin Boyce · Joe Brainard · Valentin Carron · Vija Celmins · Bruce Conner · Verne Dawson · Jay DEFeo · Trisha Donnelly ·
Urs Fischer · Bruno Gironcoli · Robert Gober · Nancy Grossman · Hans Josephsohn ·
Brion Gysin et William S. Burroughs · Toba Khedoori · Karen Kilimnik · Emma Kunz ·
Andrew Lord · Sarah Lucas · Hugo markl · Cady Noland · Laurie Parsons ·
Jean-Frederic Schnyder · Josh Smith · Paul Thek · Andy Warhol · Rebecca Warren ·
Sue Williams ·


Palais de Tokyo
www.palaisdetokyo.com
site de création contemporaine
13, avenue du Président Wilson à PARIS

Accès
Métro Iéna
Bus 32, 42, 63, 72, 80, 82, 92
RER C, Pont de l’Alma
Informations
+33 1 47 23 54 01

Admission:
Tuesday-Sunday noon to midnight