“We are surrounded by images. It's impossible to escape them. It seems to me that I'm a sort of chronical writer or reporter […] who gathers together all the images in the world, and that I'm here to produce a synthesis of them.” Erró
Anticipating the infinite and continuous flux of information and images that flows around digital networks, Erró was interested from the start in this profusion of images and he invented new narrative forms as well as lexicons of vocabulary, a novel form of grammar and original rhetoric. Using collages and paintings, he drafted a visual and critical kind of counter-encyclopedia of all forms of knowledge that is high in color and comedy, excess and ambiguity that is accessible to all.
The macLYON has chosen to present this ever-relevant aspect of his work in a 3000 m² exhibition area covering 3 floors. Comprising collages, performances, films, aquarelles, paintings and drawings, this collection of over 500 works from public and private collections from across Europe narrates all the innovative forms and aspects of the work of Erró, the first storyteller in the history of art.
General curator:
Thierry Raspail
Guest curator:
Danielle Kvaran
The artist
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Nom de l'artisteErró
Born in Iceland in 1932, Erró lives and works in Paris since 1958.
Erró is considered one of the pioneers of narrative figuration. But in reality, his extremely prolific work, which is both pop and baroque, goes well beyond this framework or categorization which would tie it into or reduce it to a certain movement or a period.
More information
Erró, in the early 60s, created his own scapes, his ‘fundamental paintings’ as he calls them. He invented a world of flux, of all-over images that permeated and filled the possibilities of the pictorial field to saturation point. Erró, with scissors and glue, with a few well-chosen brushes and huge formats, had anticipated, some 30 years beforehand, our world as a network, with its mails, chats and tweets.
He created the collage-blog before its time. While his stance was a “critical” one, like all major artists, his partition was especially new, going well beyond mere narration (of which today’s global creation has rediscovered the virtues via installation and performance art).
Erró invented a formal structure, taxonomy and a way of looking. It wasn’t until the Internet revolution that we were able to truly “see” Erró’s work in its novelty.
His language is as tragic as it is humorous; ironic; in line with politics in the noblest sense of the word, and with the world in general.
But this is only the case because his quest for experimentation is so unique; therefore his form is major.
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Titre
Narration
Erró is considered one of the pioneers of narrative figuration. But in reality, his extremely prolific work, which is both pop and baroque, goes well beyond this framework or categorization which would tie it into or reduce it to a certain movement or a period.
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Titre
The Scapes
The scapes: this is how Erró refers to his monothematic compositions, impressive accumulations, which he organizes into scenic landscapes.
In 1964, back from New York, Erró, fascinated by the giddy abundance of American consumer society, shiny and excessive, made his first scape, a large collage made using the packaging of food products, most of which were accumulated in New York. Foodscape 1964 is a portrait of the typical American of the 1960s.
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Titre
Politics
Erró is an artist who looks at the world and its conflicts. As he likes to remind us, every war is accompanied by a war of images..
“In the 1960s, a new form of figuration emerged in a tense international climate. The war in Algeria, the events of the Cold War, the Vietnam War lead to shocking images in the press. Advertising images from our increasingly consumerist society continued to grow. And confronted with the frenzy and excitement of artistic activity around the image (film, video art, comic books, pop art and new realism), certain artists—painters—choose to paint”, recalled the exhibition at the Grand Palais devoted to narrative figuration in the summer of 2008.
Informations supplémentaire programmation MAC
360° views of the exhibition
Catalogs
Catalogue Erró
Date created: 08/25/2020
Changed date: 08/25/2020
45 €
Coedition Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon and Somogy éditions d’art, 2014
408 pages
bilingual: French/English
Documents
