ARLES: LUMA Foundation and Les Rencontres de la Photographie

ARLES: LUMA Foundation and Les Rencontres de la Photographie

July 13, 2021

Text and Images by Coco Dolle

LUMA Arles Foundation

Frank Gehry’s tower in LUMA Arles, commissioned by Maja Hoffman, 2021.

The fairly new contemporary art foundation LUMA Arles has taken the spotlight in the magnificent and historical town of Arles in Provence, France. This impressive architecture is the creative project of Swiss collector Maja Hoffman, heiress of the Laboratoire Roche. Descending from a long lineage of art collectors, Maja was partially raised in Arles, and has forged a special connection with the city of Van Gogh over the years.

Set at the entrance to the town in an old rail yard factory, the foundation’s main building was designed by world-renowned designer Frank Gehry. Its stainless steel tower forms an intricate structure of mirrored impressions merging with the infinite blues of the sky. Upon entering the building, visitors are welcomed with a large-scale video presentation of Gehry’s vision. In his interview, he explains that his design aimed to both pay homage and reflect the symbolic of the Roman’s arena and the famous swirls in the painterly work of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Further at different museum levels are featured an array of commissioned works by well established contemporary artists invested in the conversation of the future and technologies. Each are presented as permanent in-situ artworks: Philippe Parreno’s film installation No More Reality, Carsten Höller’s playful Isometric Slides, Olafur Elisasson’s rotating mirror Take your Time or Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Drum Café.

Franz West’s sculpture in the garden of LUMA Arles designed by Frank Gehry, 2021.

Below on the garden level, a gigantic noodle-shaped light pink sculpture titled “Krauses Gekröse” by Franz West highly contrasts with the greens of the surrounding parks. The ground level’s main gallery then opens to the magnificent and personal collection of Maja Hoffman featuring contemporary masterpieces. Her curated exhibition “The Impermanent Display” examines the political, social and climatic transformations that we have recently experienced all over the world. Suggesting that we are in a dramatic transitional and metamorphosis stage, Maja’s collection presents monumental oeuvres including Urs Fisher’s wax piece The Rape of The Sabines, Iza Genkzen’s Nofretete and Madonna with Child, a Katharina Fritsch black madonna sculpture, a photography selection of Diane Arbus’s Archives and Paul McCarty’s Disney wood sculpture, amongst others.

In the Grande Halle, a new commission by Pierre Huygues titled After Umwelt is activated in the dark by giant led screens prompting the audience at the core of the human’s brain activity. Imagined by a brain-computer interface, this artificial imagination creates for the viewer a sense of discomfort thus with equal familiarity.

Les Rencontres de la Photographie

The main campus of LUMA is also host to other artistic events including the annual Rencontres de la Photographie. Started in the 1970s, the festival presents the new talents in contemporary photography alongside retrospectives happening in unusual places and ancient architectures around the town. The exhibition MASCULINITES was particularly significant in the way it examined the role of photography in permeating and perpetuating images of both toxic and fragile masculinities in society.

From the classic archetype of the male cowboy, to struggling liberation movement in gay culture, the position of men in public places holding political powers, pushing further with queer identities and allures, this exhibition presented a wide range of established and emerging artists such as Richard Avedon, Aneta Bartos, Cassils, Ana Mendieta, Herb Ritts and Wolfang Tillmans amongst others.

A quote by feminist theorist Laura Mulvey highlights the ambiguity of the constructed gender:

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”

Walking further through the streets of Arles, I visited the Louis Roederer discovery awards which were presented in an abandoned church and displayed the works of a mosaic of international emerging artists. As I came closer to the exhibition location, I realized I used to trespass that same church on hot summer nights with my teenager friends. I grew up in Provence and in my childhood evenings were spent wandering the streets in groups and walking on rooftops to get the view of the city. Within L’église des Frères Prêcheurs, Los Angeles based Tarrah Krajnak presented a series of well composed black and white photography revisiting iconic imagery in Weston’s nudes using her own body through the lens of her feminine identity. Zara Murff portrayed photo studies in urban communities facing racial inequities in American suburbs. French-Israeli Ilanit Tilouz proposed an experimental approach to natural environments and ecosystems scientific focusing on the Dead Sea. Czech artist Marie Tomanova presented the visual diary of her homecoming to her homeland after years of displacements - she also launched the publication of her new book New York New York, which I got a signed copy. This ended my beautiful journey in the world of photography and art in Arles.