The Feeling of Things

This research exhibition brings together artists of different generations around the figure of Bruno Munari, in a splendid homage.

A few years ago, the Belleville neighbourhood became the new focal point for the front-line activities, visibility and market of the French capital's contemporary artistic research. It is now a welcome surprise and a sign of the times to see that the exhibition at Le Plateau, more or less the local Kunsthaus, revolves around the figure and research of Bruno Munari. The Italian artist and designer casts a long shadow over this fine project and given it a joyful and inseparable imprinting in what is both an overview of never previously exhibited experiments and a packed assortment of his unseen, re-edited and forgotten works, placed alongside other far more contemporary practices.

Although this exhibition is not specifically on the designer, the route begins casually and unconventionally with a selection of his lamps. The Esagonale, cubic Bali and tubular Falkland lamps greet visitors in the lobby and are dotted along the exhibition route along with his mobiles, Travel Sculptures and an abundance of pictures and film material. This reminds us of Munari's Zen-master anecdote about the time he was looking for a nylon-stocking factory and asked them whether they could produce lamps; they answered "No", to which he replied – well you will do in the future! This same simple attitude has prompted and produced a specific approach with the most surprising results.

An extremely eclectic and educational product, this research exhibition brings together artists of different generations, selected by the young curators Elodie Royer and Yoann Gourmel, under the seriously evocative title, The Feeling of Things. It is a minimal and measured accrochage with Munari gems scattered along the way but also a path on which to discover and rediscover many other important artists.

<em>Le sentiment des choses</em>, installation view. Photo by © FRAC IDF Le Plateau / Martin Argyroglo — *Le sentiment des choses*, installation view. Photo by © FRAC IDF Le Plateau / Martin Argyroglo

The work of the Japanese collective The Play from the Kansai region is unmissable! Since 1966, far removed from the centres of contemporary production, they have been constructing a practice that goes against the very notion of the artwork, shifting the emphasis onto collective works and dynamics based on exchange. The videos showing them engaged in the construction of extremely random situations make a huge impression, with one of the many focusing on a tall lightning conductor they built every year near Kyoto, in the expectation of a natural event that might destroy it but never came. The works require careful visitor examination but all feature exemplary formal results. Those by renowned artists such as Fred Sandback, Ryan Gander and Robert Fillou are presented for their essence – the aesthetic of play or the ability to form random relationships with time and space – or their potential to generate change or optical illusions in the surrounding space. It is a meticulous display that absorbs the practices and processes of conceptual construction, all centred on the Japanese philosophy of mono no aware, that special kind of knowledge based on the emotion formed when the human soul comes into contact with facts and things.

Bruno Munari's research, impregnated with a modern form of Japonism, weaves a subtle web that binds together all the highly diverse fields of research present in this space. His chameleonic production forms the gel between the Deconstructive practices of design, such as that of Martino Gamper and the new 2D research into films and photography brought back to life in the interesting work of Clément Rodzielski. The efficacy of Munari's creative dimension and his constant search for economy of media, make comparisons impossible in this exhibition. It is the practice of building, dismantling and experimenting that is here highlighted in the advanced conclusions of a relational aesthetic well ahead of its time. A version of his famous children's game with projected images in a fine new assembly created by the pupils of two local schools almost turns Munari the artist into an early Sol Lewitt.

The efficacy of Munari's creative dimension and his constant search for economy of media, make comparisons impossible in this exhibition

This is a successful project which, in the intentions of the curators, could spread across the country and time. Starting from this exhibition, works in progress such as Chitti Ksemkitvatana & Pratchaya Phinthong's pilot issue of the magazine Messy Sky, which can be downloaded free online, can be seen here in an extremely elegant and Munari-style binding-display case, the poster-object of this exploratory work. The creative works invented and liberated for all of us by this "Peter Pan with the calibre of a Leonardo", as Pierre Restany described Bruno Munari, truly deserved this splendid homage and the dynamic possibility of a non-retrospective. Ivo Bonacorsi

Le Sentiment des Choses
Le Plateau Frac Île-de-France
Paris
Through 26 February

The Feeling of Things

This research exhibition brings together artists of different generations around the figure of Bruno Munari, in a splendid homage.

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