ARTcheology, remains and works

Contemporary art and archeology are two disciplines that seem distant at first glance. However, artists find in this human science, and the vestiges that it brings to light, numerous themes to explore and question.

ARCHÉA, museum of the Roissy Pays de France urban community, presents the temporary exhibition “ARTcheology, vestiges and works”.

ARCHÉA is a territorial and archeology museum which focuses on the history of human societies in the Pays de France. The ARCHÉA team created bridges between the museum's collections and the works of 17 contemporary artists - or artist duos - loaned by public institutions, galleries or artists. By bringing together traces of the past and the art of the living, this contemporary rereading promotes the emergence of a new look - open, spontaneous, uninhibited, plural - on the collections, going beyond the historicist and scholarly look of traditional skirmishes.

By browsing the exhibition, we understand that the works brought together - paintings, sculptures, videos, installations or photographs - are part of a real connection and explore what is constitutive of our history. The history of art is full of testimonies from artists who were interested in archeology and the study of remains. Archeology has nourished their imagination with the mysterious side that surrounds it. But the romantic and fascinating dimension of archeology is not the only attraction artists have for this discipline.

Thus, the work-performance "Le Déjeuner sous l'herbe" by the artist Daniel Spoerri (1983), gave rise to the first archaeological excavation of contemporary art (2010). Mentioned at the start of this exhibition, it is an emblematic example of artists’ interest in archaeology. Whether their affinities with this science are material, formal, thematic, memorial or serial, each of the works presented tells a shared story, from the origins of creation to modernity. Between diversion and sacralization, continuum and rupture, this link appears fruitful and continually revisited.

You too, let yourself be surprised by coming to discover this unique journey at ARCHÉA, between past and present.

Exhibition with the artists:

Giulio and Augusto BERNARDI, Stéphane BORDARIER, Clément BORDERIE, Ali CHERRI, Pascal CONVERT, Jean-Paul GANEM, Josef KOUDELKA, Kôichi KURITA, Morice LIPSI, Philippe MAYAUX, Gilles ODERIGO, Terence PIQUE, Anne and Patrick POIRIER, Sophie RISTELHUEBER, Daniel SPOERRI , Julia STEINER, Keiichi TAHARA.