Dans le cadre de l’exposition
Peter Halley. Conduits: Paintings from the 1980s
13.09.2023 | 18h00–19h00 | Auditorium | EN | Free of charge
A Crisis in Geometry: From Square to Prison | Talk with Peter Halley
Assembling thirty key works from public and private collections, Mudam’s current retrospective survey of Peter Halley’s early work presents paintings alongside previously unseen drawings, sketches and notes.
This special artist lecture, given on the occasion of this exhibition, takes its title from Halley’s influential 1984 essay which began by contending: ‘Where once geometry provided a sign of stability, order, and proportion, today it offers an array of shifting signifiers and images of confinement and deterrence.’ During the 1980s Halley redeployed the language of geometric abstraction, developing a pictorial system of ‘prisons’, ‘cells’ and ‘conduits’. In this talk he addresses the genesis of this singular vocabulary, which has been central to his work now for over forty years and considers its social, economic, cultural and political origins as well as its evolution in his work today.
Limited availability | Booking: mudam.com/peter-halley-talk
16.09.2023 | 15h00–16h00 | Auditorium | FR | Accès compris dans le ticket d’entrée
Peter Halley, société de contrôle et simulacres ou l’art comme science-fiction | Conférence de Olivier Schefer
Cette intervention se propose de lire l’oeuvre de Peter Halley par le double prisme de la philosophie contemporaine et du cinéma. Nous verrons comment la peinture « néo-géo » de Peter Halley, traversée par des questions politiques, résonne singulièrement avec la pensée de Jean Baudrillard sur le système des objets et des simulacres, mais aussi avec certaines fictions cinématographiques relatives aux nouveaux espaces d’enfermement (Playtime, THX 1138). « On pourrait qualifier l’homme moderne, le cybernéticien, d’hypocondriaque cérébral, obsédé par la circulation absolue des messages. » (Baudrillard).
Olivier Schefer est écrivain et philosophe, il enseigne l’Esthétique et la philosophie de l’art à l’Université Paris 1. À travers ses ouvrages, Olivier Schefer étudie la théorie esthétique du romantisme allemand, le cinéma de fantômes et de somnambules, mais aussi la poétique contemporaine des ruines et de l’entropie. Il est l’auteur de nombreuses contributions pour des catalogues d’artistes contemporains (Cyprien Gaillard, Anish Kapoor, Bernar Venet, Stéphane Thidet, etc.). Sa dernière publication est un ouvrage sur l’oeuvre plastique, théorique et littéraire de Robert Smithson : Sur Robert Smithson. Variations dialectiques (La Lettre volée, 2021).
Places limitées | Réservation : mudam.com/rsvp-mudam-lectures
27.09.2023 | 18h30–20h00 | Level 1: West Gallery | EN | Free of charge
Halley and the city | Lecture by architect Philippe Nathan
The ascetic formal reduction, the stoic repetition of graphic elements of Peter Halley’s paintings seem to reenact the underlying logics of spatial planning, and thus to reveal the mechanisms of country- and city-making since the capitalist recuperation of modernism: the division of space into economic and legal fragments. Yet beyond a hedonistic abstraction in joyful colours, Peter Halley’s art hence evokes the human condition in the contemporary city.
A lecture as interpretation attempt.
Philippe Nathan is an architect by education. After having collaborated with Brussels-based architecture office 51N4E, he returned to Luxembourg in 2010 to found the office 2001, which he has led since 2014 in association with Sergio Carvalho. Beside 2001’s practice in architecture, urbanism and territorial development, Philippe Nathan is recurrently active as curator, contributor, essayist and jury member in the cultural field. He taught at the University of Brussels in 2015, as an assistant at ETH Zurich from 2016 to 2018, worked as a studio tutor at the University of Luxembourg in 2019 and 2022 and led Studio 2001 at TU Kaiserslautern in 2021.
Limited availability | Booking: mudam.com/rsvp-mudam-lectures
