The spectacle of daily life, as
the 10th Biennale de Lyon (Lyon Biennial) is entitled, will be curated by Hou Hanru,
from 16 September to 3 January 2009.
The Lyon Biennial arose
from a project of the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, directed since its
founding in 1984 by Thierry Raspail. From 1984 to 1988, the Biennial’s
forerunner was an annual event entitled October of
the Arts, which ended with the exhibition La Couleur
seule, l’experience du monochrome (Colour alone: the monochrome
experience).
The exhibition retraced the adventure of monochrome, from
its historical avant-garde and impressionist
beginnings up to the present day, from Malevitch to Anish Kapoor. Housed in
various venues across the city, La Couleur seule
proved a resounding success and thus opened the doors to the city of Lyon’s
potential to host an international event in the region, following the
interruption of the Paris Biennial in 1985. It culminated, in September 1991, in
the first Biennale de Lyon.
The desire to create a structure
that could be renewed artistically, while at the same time devising a long-term
stable project in keeping with the region, led to the creation of a method of
organisation that is specific to the Lyon Biennial: an artistic committee that
draws up an overarching long-term vision, then selects for each edition a
curator with whom it works closely on the planning of an artistic project.
Each Biennial is an opportunity to explore a specific theme.
The first nine editions were organised into three successive trilogies: the
first devoted to History, the second to Globalisation and the third to
Temporality. They have been curated by curators, art historians and art critics,
among them Harald Szeemann, Jean-Hubert Martin and Stéphanie Moisdo.
For further information, please visit the Biennale de Lyon Official Website |