UPCOMING

Combining paintings, sculptures, found objects, photographs and silkscreened works, the installations of Victor Man are hallmarked by their murky atmospheres, at once fascinating and disquieting. Often made with found images connected to a more or less recent past, which, removed from their initial context, take on other levels of meaning, his works exude melancholy, solitude, the violence of existence, desire, and a certain mysticism.

The installations of the Norwegian artist Børre Sæthre take the shape of dreamlike environments, on the borderline between fairy tales and futuristic worlds, calling to mind the atmosphere of a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Like these scenes associating stuffed animals and high-tech environments, playing on the concertina-ing of eclectic worlds, they trigger in viewers an impression of uncanniness.

Sarah Sze creates ephemeral in situ sculptures, in which a host of everyday objects are painstakingly assembled to form light and fragile structures which invade space. Her works are invariably conceived in response to the architecture of exhibition venues, and invite spectators to move among different scales, ranging from humble to monumental, micro- and macroscopic. Mudam has invited Sara Sze to make a new installation for the Museum Pavilion.

Next Cabane and Riot Act are projects of Fabrica. This think tank of the company Benetton is an applied creativity laboratory, a talent incubator, a studio of sorts in which young artists are invited to develop innovative projects and explore new directions, from design, music and film to photography, publishing and the Internet. These artist-experimenters are accompanied along their research path by leading figures, blurring the boundaries of culture and language.

Maurizio Galante, a haute couture fashion designer, and Tal Lancman, underscore the close link between art and industry. From concept to making, the works on view illustrate their meetings with Baccarat, Boffi, Cerruti Baleri, Craft, the Fondation Cartier, Ithemba, the Mudam, Mussi… Merging past and future, craftsmanship and technology, Maurizio Galante and Tal Lancman describe for us the itinerary of their creations, from the “conception of the idea” to the finished products.

History recorded Kandinsky’s shock when, in 1896, he found himself in front of the series of Monet’s Meules/Haystacks, an experience which he turned into the ground-breaking birth of abstraction. More than a century later, while the theoretical not to say political challenges which have gone hand in hand with the adventure of abstraction no longer have any currency, the fact remains that abstract art is still diversifying. It is this feature which the exhibition is intent on emphasizing, focusing on the dissolution of the motif and the appearance of forms.

Design City is concerned with design for its contribution to quality of life, a decisive factor in the locating of companies and an important element of differenciation and tourist attraction. Design City 2012 is presenting a series of events which focus on multidisciplinary work of designers. On this occasion, public space will host the exhibition Index: Award 2011, presenting a selection from the 60 finalists nominated for this big international design prize.

Since the beginning of the 1970s, Sanja Iveković, who is familiar to the public for her project Lady Rosa of Luxembourg, has developed a politically committed artistic practice. This retrospective presents a large panorama of the artist’s practice. It is articulated around two central questions related to the Lady Rosa of Luxembourg project and her practice as a whole: the place of women in society and the notions of monument and memory.

Les installations d'Emily Bates sont le fruit de recherches développées sur le long terme dans des contextes géographiques spécifiques, souvent marqués par la transition entre cultures traditionnelles et modernité. Son projet Love Scenes s’intéresse ainsi à la culture minoritaire des Naxi en Chine, tandis que The Nurturing Island a pour cadre une île tropicale située dans le sud du Japon. Pour son exposition au Mudam, Emily Bates a été invitée à développer un nouveau projet.

Filipa César se penche sur une période particulièrement importante de l'histoire récente du Portugal : la fin du régime autoritaire de Salazar et la décolonisation de la Guinée-Bissau. Trois films ayant comme point de départ des documents d'époque ou des interviews des activistes de cette époque, constituent le noyau de l'exposition. Un fac-similé du livre d'Aimé Césaire, Discurso sobre o colonialismo, interdit avant 1974, ainsi que des affiches relatives à ce sujet complètent l'exposition.

For Luxembourg Atelier, five Luxembourg museum institutions are collaborating to present a glimpse of creative activity in Luxembourg from 1945 to the present day. This vast panorama brings back to life the struggles of innovative artists living in a country that was for a long time situated on the margins of dominant artistic trends but which, since the end of the 20th century, has found its place in European artistic development.