Le silence une fiction at Villa Paloma, Monaco

The exhibition "Le silence une fiction" at Villa Paloma, part of the Nouveau musée national de Monaco, runs from February 2 to April 3, 2012. Curated by Italian Simone Menegoi, it features 26 artists from diverse generations. Menegoi drew inspiration from the film "The Wild Blue Wonder" (2005), using a montage-like juxtaposition of works. The show opens with urban ruins: a video by Erin Shirreff shows an American city swept by smoke (actually light on a photograph), photographs by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre depict devastated Detroit, and Peter Buggenhout's "The Blind Leading the Blind" offers a surreal assemblage. Works by Spoerri and Arman evoke remnants of humanity. Upstairs, flora and fauna mutate: Michel Blazy's rotting oranges, Lourdes Castro's heliogravure herbarium, and Jochen Lempert's starling flocks forming a face. The centerpiece is Adrien Missika's video "Darvaza," commissioned by museum director Marie-Claude Beaud, showing a burning crater in Central Asia that has blazed for 40 years due to a failed gas pipeline. The third floor presents a new world: a surviving plant by Blazy, Carlos Casas's accelerated aurora borealis, and Rudolf Polanszky's plexiglass chests on metal bases. A text by writer and critic Chris Sharp accompanies the exhibition.