Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno's Arles Arena Sand Installation Disappoints

In July 2012, Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno organized an exhibition titled 'Vers la lune en passant par la plage' at the Arènes d'Arles, featuring twenty artists including Daniel Buren, Anri Sala, Pierre Huyghe, and Tris Vonna-Michel. The centerpiece was a massive pile of sand reshaped by a tractor to evoke a lunar landscape, with visual and sound interventions. The event was presented as an exploration of work, production, and transformation, but critics found it underwhelming. A nighttime performance by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Ari Benjamin Meyers, and Tristan Bera was described as a naive light-and-sound show set to Grieg's music, met with sparse applause and embarrassed silence. The exhibition was funded by the Fondation Luma, founded by Maja Hoffmann, and was intended as a precursor to the foundation's exploratory character. The critic Bernard Marcelis questioned the substantial financial resources spent on what he deemed a non-event and suggested Hoffmann should renew her core group.