La Maison Rouge Exhibits Works From the Olbricht Collection

Written by Pierre Brumant Monday, 17 October 2011 00:02

Paris.- La Maison Rouge is proud to present "Memories of the Future: The Olbrich Collection" on view at the foundation from October 22nd through January 15th 2012. A medical doctor and art collector from Essen, Germany, Thomas Olbricht, two years ago set up Me Collectors Room, a contemporary art venue in Berlin which, like La Maison Rouge, hosts temporary exhibitions. The Olbricht collection, one of the biggest in Germany, comprises in excess of 2,500 works, a selection of which is on permanent show at Me Collectors Room. This is the first time the collection has travelled to France. La Maison Rouge, a private non-profit foundation, opened in June 2004 in Paris to promote contemporary creation through three temporary exhibitions a year.  Solo or group shows, some are staged by independent curators.

The Olbricht collection is remarkable for its scope, as it covers a period of five hundred years from the 16th to the 21st centuries and takes in a huge diversity of media and genres, from engravings by Albrecht Dürer, Martin Schongauer and Francisco de Goya to others by the Chapman brothers; from photographs by Robert Capa to prints by Cindy Sherman and Vic Muniz; from paintings of the Flemish and Italian schools to the work of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Allan McCollum; from Renaissance ivory statuettes to bronzes by Thomas Schütte and wax sculptures by Berlinde de Bruyckere. Thomas Olbricht's journey through the history of art is guided by powerful themes. They inform his choices, run throughout the collection, and connect the works despite their different eras, media and statuses. Death and its representation, vanity, religious faith, war, the fragility and beauty of the female body, and artists' renderings of the strange and the marvellous, make this a unique and highly disconcerting collection. One of its most striking objects is the reconstruction of a Kunst und Wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities). A Renaissance precursor to the western concept of the museum, these cabinets are a collection of objects intended to further wonderment and knowledge, and an attempt to understand the world and how art, nature and science interrelate. In Olbricht's Wunderkammer, organic and mineral matter, intricate miniature anatomical models, unusual measuring and surgical instruments juxtapose artworks, particularly Memento Mori. The skulls and skeletons made indifferently from ivory, walnut shells, wood or coral, whose essential purpose, above and beyond their artistic prowess, is to remind Man of his mortality. For the past twenty years, Thomas Olbricht has been compiling a collection of contemporary art which he shows alongside this historic collection.  The exhibition takes its name from Laurent Grasso's Memories of the Future (2010), one of the works in the Olbricht collection.

Thomas Olbricht's eclectic choices are guided solely by his insatiable passion for art. He brings artists which history and sometimes the market have acknowledged, together with little-known young artists from around the world. Profoundly post-modern, narrative and figurative for the most part, these young artists view the art of centuries past with curiosity, willingly drawing inspiration from, and measuring themselves against, their masters. Works by artists whose diverse positions elicit ruptures and tensions, ranging from Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke to Franz Gertschou, John Currin, Daniel Richter, together with representatives of the very young generation such as Jonas Burgert, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz or Richard Wathen, will introduce the public to contemporary painting that is rarely seen in France.  The exhibition will also include installations and sculptures (Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gian Paolo Bertozzi and Stefano dal Monte Casoni, Katerina Fritsch) and historic and contemporary photography (Nick Ut, Nicholas Nixon, Désirée Dolron, Mat Collishaw).


All these works illustrate the themes that define the Olbricht collection. This selection of some 150 works gives insight into an original collector with an unerring eye. At the same time as Thomas Olbricht shows works from his collection at La Maison Rouge in Paris, Antoine de Galbert will unveil part of his collection at Me Collectors Room in Berlin, with deliberate emphasis on young artists born or working in France. They include Julien Berthier, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Claire Fontaine, Damien Deroubaix, Mathieu Pernot and Stéphane Thidet.

While La Maison Rouge was never intended to house the collection of its founder, Antoine de Galbert, an active figure on the French art scene, his personality and outlook as a collector are evident throughout. Since its very first exhibition, Behind Closed Doors:  The Private Life of Collections (2004), La Maison Rouge has continued to show private collections and consider the issues and questions surrounding them. After graduating in political science, Antoine de Galbert (b. 1955) worked in corporate management before opening a contemporary art gallery in Grenoble, which he ran for ten years. This was also when he started a collection that would take up more and more of his life.  In 2000, he took the decision to set up a foundation that would give a lasting and public dimension to his commitment to contemporary art. La Maison Rouge occupies a renovated factory on a site covering 2,500 sq m in the Bastille district, opposite the Arsenal marina. Some 1,300 sq m are reserved for the galleries which encircle the "red house" from which the foundation takes its name. This concept of a house reflects the foundation's vocation to be a pleasant and welcoming space where visitors can take in an exhibition, attend lectures, browse in the bookshop or enjoy a drink. The reception area was designed by Jean-Michel Alberola. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.lamaisonrouge.org

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