Author(s): Matthieu Poirier

CONTEMPORARY ART

This book showcases one century of abstract sculpture (1918-2018) under the unprecedented prism of the aerial suspension. From the sculptures of Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Alexander Rodchenko at the end of the 1910s, to Alexander Calder or Bruno Munari at the beginning of the 1930s, following with Soto, François Morellet, Daniel Buren, Julio Le Parc in the 1950s, then Sol LeWitt or Robert Morris and more recently Xavier Veilhan, Ernesto Neto, or Haegue Yang. If many of these suspended artworks remain static, some of them follow the concept of the "mobile", hanging from the ceiling and given over to the invisible forces in the air. This new aesthetic is correlated to the modern eye, more dynamic, as well as to the reassessment of traditional modes of exhibiting artworks and to overhead hanging. This art form is connected to the cosmogonic imagination, to the conquest of the air, then, post-war, of space, but also to the fear of the void, to chandeliers, to hanging, climbing and falling, as well as to levitation or even floating.