March 3 - July 11, 2010

Exhibition of "national interest"

The Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to present the largest retrospective of the work of Ben Vautier, a major artist whose remarkably rich and profuse body of work combines humour and drama, reflecting the realities of life that the artist has made an integral part of his work.

Running from 3 March to 11 July 2010, the show occupies some 3,000 square metres (all the museum’s exhibition spaces) and features over a thousand works, from the earliest pieces made in Nice some fifty years ago, via the concepts, performances, word paintings, gestes, to the latest creations. This unprecedented monograph show also includes videos as well as works created specially for the occasion.

The scale of this retrospective (the biggest yet organised: works from 1955 to 2010) enables visitors to experience the full extent and significance of an artistic world that it would be wrong to limit to its most media-friendly aspect.

Curator of the exhibition

Jon Hendricks

Jon Hendricks is an art historian, artist, and Fluxus Consulting Curator of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and curator of Yoko Ono Exhibitions. He has edited and co-edited a number of books, including “ Make a Salad.” Fluxus Scores and Instructions; The Transformative Years with Marianne Bech and Media Farzin (Museet for Samtidskunst, 2008), What’s Fluxus? What’s Not! Why. (Centro Cultural/Banco do Brasil and Silverman Fluxus Collection, Detroit, 2003), Fluxus Codex (Abrams, 1988), and YES YOKO ONO, with Alexandra Munroe (Abrams, 2000). From 1966 to 1968, Hendricks was the director of the Judson Gallery at Judson Memorial Church in New York, where he gave exhibitions to artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Meredith Monk, Yoko Ono and presented Destruction Art events, including work by Hermann Nitsch, Lil Picard, Bici Forbes, Ralph Ortiz, Jean Toche, Allan Kaprow and Charlotte Moorman. Hendricks is a member, with Jean Toche, of GAAG (Guerilla Art Action Group), which started in 1969.

Exhibition of "national interest"

This exhibition is recognised by the Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Management of Museums of France as an exhibition of "national interest" and as such will receive special government financial backing.