Botaniques des imaginaires
Centre Pompidou collection at the Abbey of Saint Germain, Auxerre, France
Curated by Jonathan Pouthier & Inés Vasquez Messano.
As an object of contemplation and interrogation, the plant world is a formidable producer of forms and narratives. Effectively, artists and scientists have sought to unravel its mysteries and meaning. In part ‑ nership with the Saint Germain Abbey in Auxerre, the Centre Pompidou presents its collections in a temporary exhibition exploring botanical imaginations in modern and contemporary art.
“De plante de serre à fleur de pot,” is a type ‑ written note Marcel Duchamp wrote in 1913, in a style known only to him. Taking this wordplay liter ‑ ally, the present exhibition stages the reversibility of viewpoints and sensibilities in the spaces of the Abbey. On the stage of this theatre of botanical imaginations, each work informs another to sketch out a non‑linear poetic narrative, intentionally left open to multiple interpretations.
This multidisciplinary journey through the history of forms, from the 19th century to the present day, adopts a principle of correspondence between artistic practices, blending them into one another. The collections of the city of Auxerre—ranging from the Eckmülh collection to the Natural History Museum’s—dialogue under the arches of the Abbey, with films, sculptures, scientific objects and NFTs, inviting visitors to new accounts of nature. A botany garden staged by Jonathan Pouthier in collabo ‑ ration with Inés Vázquez Messano, Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou