"Mathematics" at the Fondation Cartier

The curatorial team acted more like a research body than a gallery when they developed themes and explored new worlds and concepts in close collaboration with artists.

Visitors to the Fondation Cartier's exhibitions have become accustomed to sudden feelings of confusion not unlike those prompted by the subtitle of the new "Mathematics" exhibition and those same feelings arise in multiple and mysterious form before the circular motif of its intriguing mandala poster, designed by Tadanori Yokoo. The curatorial team acted more like a research body than a gallery when they developed themes and explored new worlds and concepts in close collaboration with artists – a partnership that produced an exhibition linked to recent ones and to big names such as David Lynch, Takeshi Kitano and Patti Smith. The Foundation's solo exhibitions have led to more specialised activities and the specific disciplines, whether linked to music or films, have now expanded to terrains more fitting to an entertainment dimension close to contemporary art but, with this Mathematics project, Hervé Chandés andMichel Cassé embarked on an even more ambitious challenge, flanking the tried-and-tested involvement of artists with a multi-disciplinary research group comprising members of some of Europe's most important science institutes. The Institut Henri Poincaré, the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, IHES, the institute of advanced scientific studies, CERN and LHC and their mathematicians and scientists traced the framework of this image-exhibition.
The Room of the Four Mysteries. View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
The Room of the Four Mysteries. View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
Just as when a mathematical formula is written and all its potential variables developed, the result is extremely elegant, multifaceted, packed with fascinating material and does not bore the public. Having banished the pretentious and educational traits common to art and science, they entrusted the styling of the most fascinating theoretical research of our times to the vision of first-rate scientists and artists. Making David Lynch responsible for the interface and presentation of an ergo-robotics experiment by INRIA in Bordeaux may be questionable but certainly a solution of such calibre allows the expert hands of the American master to bring a valuable surreal note to the robot installation and the effects of calculation on the artificial curiosity that slowly develops before the public's eyes.
Flowers Fields: curiosity and language. View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
Flowers Fields: curiosity and language. View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
The voices, choreographies and objectual universe typical of his film imagery help illustrate the evolution of the mathematical models behind the actions of this tiny tribe. Laboratory machines and videos become alien material, a mind or minds, that compare their interaction strategies with those of onlookers moving in front of a digital eye. This exhibition highlights the common sentiment, the thrill shared by scientists and artists when the link between unexpected symmetries in their research suddenly becomes clear. In a beautiful b/w film shown in the basement of the foundation, Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret go in search of the people who are driving contemporary mathematics. Despite devoting only four minutes to each member—male and female—of the scientific community involved in this operation, their highly effective format highlights different passions and methods, as if it were a catalogue of styles, procedures and types. The genesis of an idea in the mathematician's mind and its journey through hand and sign to reach "mathematical heaven" are charted like the perfect, effective and retrospective one redrawn by Jean Michel Alberola on a wall as black as slate. The map of the great French mathematician Henrì Poincaré's thought sits beside a video of simple hand movements busy illustrating concepts. It is, however, Cedric Villani's ideas that seem to express a previously unseen beauty in the mathematical gesture of Cercignani's Conjecture.
Just as when a mathematical formula is written and all its potential variables developed, the result is extremely elegant, multifaceted, packed with fascinating material and does not bore the public.
The Library of Mysteries. View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
The Library of Mysteries. View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
The exhibition route has been conceived as a journey into the centre of this universe which feeds on considerations and ideas that rarely involve straightforward logic. Ending the visit is an idea of extraordinary elegance embodied in an object conceived by Hirogi Sugimoto. The Japanese artist has, on an environmental scale, recreated the intuitions behind a series of still-lifes previously displayed in these same spaces. What was a 20-centimetre plaster model of one of his b/w photographs has become a site-specific installation. Now the magic of the picture has vanished, all that remains of his pseudosphere is a model. Made of aluminium, it occupies the centre of a room, three metres tall but only two millimetres in diameter at the top. Onlookers approach it looking for their own reflection but the narcissistic gesture is lost in an asymptote that only reflects ad infinitum.
The Library of Mysteries. View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
The Library of Mysteries. View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
At the start of the exhibition, a mute zero-shaped structure that resembles the entrance to a temple greets visitors, steeping them in a similar kind of confusion. Russian mathematician Misha Gromov's Library of Mysteries—as created by David Lynch with Patti Smith's voice reverberating like a litany—is a collection of all the objects that can be seen in the universe. Classified in order of size from the tiny Planck's pearl with a radius of 10-33 cm up to the 1028 radius of the universe… An exhibition with fine aesthetic content and truly everything it takes to attract and satisfy a large number of visitors until next spring. Ivo Bonacorsi
Raymond Depardon e Claudine Nougaret, <i>Au Bonheur des Maths</i>. View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
Raymond Depardon e Claudine Nougaret, Au Bonheur des Maths. View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
Jean-Michel Alberola, <i>Un ciel mathématique – Henri Poincaré</i>. View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
Jean-Michel Alberola, Un ciel mathématique – Henri Poincaré. View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
Hiroshi Sugimoto, <i>Conceptual Form 011</i>, 2008. View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Conceptual Form 011, 2008. View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
The Library of Mysteries. View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
The Library of Mysteries. View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
View of the exhibition <i>Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere</i>, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah
View of the exhibition Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere, until March 18 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Photo Olivier Ouadah

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