Yves Klein e Arman | Le Vide et Le Plein
The Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati presents an unprecedented exhibition project that compares 60 works by Yves Klein (1928 - 1962) and Arman (1928 - 2005), French artists who were leading exponents of the Nouveau Réalisme movement, of which Ceresio Investors is Main Sponsor.
(22 September 2024 - 12 January 2025)
Le Vide et Le Plein, the Void and the Full
The two entities chosen by Yves Klein and Arman to orientate their artistic action find a definition across epochs and cultures, touching on different disciplines, from physics to philosophy, from poetry to popular imagination. For Klein, the Void, as a spatial quality, is also identified with the poetic dimension of ‘immateriality’ towards which his entire artistic career, influenced by Zen philosophy, tends. Through the concept of Plein Arman exalts, on the other hand, the object resulting from industrial production and duplicates its physical presence to the point of saturation. If Klein in 1958 for his historic exhibition Le Vide at Iris Clert's gallery in Paris leaves the exhibition space completely empty, like the sukiya, the Japanese ‘tea room’, two years later Arman enacts, in the same gallery, an operation of the opposite sign. In fact, the artist fills the space with debris, objects and old furniture, transforming it into a showcase that the public can only observe from the outside.
‘If Klein with Le Vide operates an innovative contamination between Eastern and Western culture, opening a new chapter in the sensitivity towards reality, Arman, with the accumulation of objects and waste of urban reality seems to want to emphasise the importance of the object and the process of productive quantification, taking it to the extreme consequences of saturation, almost prophesying the consumerist and surplus societies of the entire West, and not only’, explains the curator Bruno Corà about Le Vide et Le Plein.
An exhibition of rare beauty, that we are extremely honored to contribute to, sustaining Mr and Mrs Olgiati's continuous commitment to the cultural development through Art.
The exhibition
Curated by Bruno Corà and with installation by Mario Botta, the exhibition is developed in five rooms where 60 works by Klein and Arman come face to face, proceeding in thematic pairs. The first contrasts Klein's monochromes with Arman's prints: nine monochromes created between 1955 and 1959 with pure pigments opposed to inked stamps on paper or panel. This is followed by Klein's anthropometries and Arman's accumulations: five body imprints of models in motion, sprinkled with pure blue pigment and synthetic resin, ‘traces of life’ recorded during a performance art session in 1960, placed in front of accumulations of objects such as ramekins, screws, coils of wire, light bulbs, electric razors. The dialogue continues with Klein's monochrome sponges, opposed to Arman's rages: stringed musical instruments, from cello to guitar, dissected and frozen in their destruction.
Natural elements enter Klein's works again: the cosmogonies, elaborations of pure blue pigment by rain, sun, wind, and paintings made with fire; on the other hand, the accumulations become industrial, with connecting rods and body parts from Renault car factories, repeated in a shifting of forms reminiscent of the Futurist language. The exhibition presents a selection of works from the Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati Collection, the Yves Klein archives and other private collections. The permanent collection is also on display, with works by Giacomo Balla, Jannis Kounellis, Wolfgang Laib and Michelangelo Pistoletto.
La Collezione Olgiati
The Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati Collection, open to the public in the exhibition space adjacent to the LAC cultural centre, renews the works on display every year, drawing from its rich Collection covering 120 years of art history from the early 20th century to the present day. The Collection's focus is on Italian art that looks to the rest of the world.
