Botaniques des imaginaires, Centre Pompidou collection at the Abbey of Saint Germain

Botaniques des imaginaires marks the 3rd year in a row that Auxerre has hosted the Centre Pompidou for this recurring exhibition, in 2024 curating a collection of work that interrogates the relationship between the botanical and the imaginary.

From the exhibition text:

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 partnership 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 literally, 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.