With the participation of:
Susanne Pfeffer (Director, Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt), Diedrich Diederichsen (author and cultural critic, Vienna), Helen Marten (artist, London)
The brainchild of Clément Dirié, Expology is a cycle of events dedicated to some of the most emblematic exhibitions in the history of contemporary art. In 2021, the first season focused on the 1990s in France. In 2022, the second season looks at three major monographic exhibitions that marked the 2010s with strong curatorial stakes: Cady Noland at the Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 2018; Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form at the Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Fondation Beyeler, Basel, and MMK, Frankfurt, 2010-2011, and Pierre Huyghe at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013.
The 2018 solo exhibition by Cady Noland (b. 1956) at the Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt was a significant event in several respects. Firstly, it was an extensive exhibition of an artist notoriously retired from the art world. Secondly, it brought together almost eighty works by a figure who has played a key role in contemporary art throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with the dual showcasing of the mechanisms of violence and celebrity that continue to inform societies even today. Lastly, the exhibition provided the opportunity to discover her practice with regard to other pieces from the MMK collection, in particular works by Kenneth Noland, Steven Parrino, and Charlotte Posenenske.
By bringing together Susanne Pfeffer, curator of the Cady Noland exhibition, Diedrich Diederichsen, critic associated with the exhibition, and Helen Marten, artist and visitor to the exhibition, as well as a number of documents relating to the project, this conference looks back on the genesis, issues, and reception of the exhibition. It also explores the relationship between the works from the MMK collection and the “retrospective” devoted to Cady Noland, one of contemporary art’s most powerful voices in recent decades.
Clément Dirié
An historian, art critic, and exhibition curator, Clément Dirié is the editorial director of JRP|Editions, a publishing house for which he has edited numerous books and DVDs related to the history of exhibitions from the 20th and 21st centuries. An attentive observer of current artistic creation, as well as of the genealogies of the history of contemporary art, he is the author of numerous essays exploring art and design, and a book entitled Iris Clert. L’Astre ambigu de l’avant-garde published by Hermann editions.
The conference is in English, with a simultaneous French translation.
