Denis Savary | Temps De Mars | Musée des Beaux-Arts

Opening March 9

The exhibition Temps de Mars takes its title from a work by Charles L'Eplattenier dating from 1907. Depicting a Jura summit where the snow seems to have just begun to melt, under a stormy sky, this landscape is the starting point for a reflection on the links between the visual arts and climate change: with its double-entendre title, it associates spring with the planet Mars, the mineralized double of the Earth from which all life seems to have disappeared for the time being, while at the same time inviting us to project ourselves into other times, long, ancient or future.

Based on a confrontation between historical works from the museum's collection and a corpus of contemporary pieces, the exhibition explores the alien future of mountain landscapes, especially in the Jura, and their inhabitants (flora and fauna). An interest in landscape painting enables us to measure the evolution of modes of representation, but also of the habitability of the spaces that artists have historically set themselves the task of representing. Here, art becomes the bearer of testimony to past climatic and landscape conditions. At the same time, art is a tool for speculation, enabling us to consider the future transformations of familiar territories.

 

With works by Caroline Bachmann, Rémy Bender, Cindy Coutant, Bertrand Dezoteux, Andreas Dobler, Florent Dubois, Mathis Gasser, Thomas Huber, Pauline Julier, Kunsthaus Neverländ, Lang/Baumann, Lou Masduraud, Nelly Monnier, Adrian Morris, Yoan Mudry, Denis Savary, Ambroise Tièche, Nicolas Ponce, Jean-Xavier Renaud and René Zäch, in dialogue with the museum's collection.