Installed out of its walls, forced to move to carry out major renovation work, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMCO) chose, this summer, to go back in time. He presents in Soma, a raw space of the vives, which recalls the industrial premises of the rue des Vieux-Grenadiers, an exhibition entitled Psot netebras xul Who plays, of course, bizarre anagram, with the motto of Geneva, but also on highlighting, in other words on the “revelation” that contemporary art in Geneva could constitute.
He tells how this modern then contemporary art, will be shown, seen, loved or hated, will be done, and gradually find its place. And this, thanks to the action of artists, collectives, conservatives, art historians, gallery owners, teachers and collectors who will give birth, in 1973, to the Association for a Museum of Modern Art (AMAM) then to the opening of Mamco in 1994, while it stimulates the appearance of different contemporary artistic scenes in Geneva.
Battles and victories
To deliver this inventory, Mamco uses several means. The number 15 of his magazine reports – by invoking in particular actors of the Geneva scene, including John Armleder, Daniel Baumann, who studied at the Higher School of Visual Arts (ESAV, ancestor of the Head), or the art historian and curator Rainer Michael Mason, co -founder of the Amam – how the people of Geneva discovered, then appreciated, Contemporary works.
These written testimonies are extended by a chronological documentary clash – photos, newspaper clippings, reports, videos, posters, deplicants – which traces battles, quarrels, advances, reculades and victories that accompanied the birth of contemporary art in Geneva from the 1960s to 1994.
The works shown appear as an extension of these actions. Between Skylar (1992) by Sylvie Fleury, the oldest of the parts arranged here, large sound installation, placed at the entrance to Psot netebras xul – which organizes around an old Buick with open doors a whole chic and girly – and the most recent, Life and everything (2025) by Bastien Gachet, dirty sink exposed to winds and rains, placed at the bottom of the space in the basement, thirty-three years of Geneva creation present themselves in dispersed order.
Protect oneself
There is there, as if to take shelter or, on the contrary, experience the rigor of time, a “cabin” built by Fabrice Gygi (Tour2000) and a large Teepee (1998) created by Klat, a collective founded in 1997 by five ESAV students in which we can read, in English: “today’s children should protect themselves from the 90s”.
Gianni Motti and Mai-Thu Perret beckon. The first by a PVC tube, high as a reverbera, on which one of Italian magazines are displayed at the time of the triumph of Berlusconi (An Italian story1999); the second by mysterious and elegant “runes” of white neon lights, posed against the concrete wall (Unconditional Sign II, III et IV2011).
The more we approach the present times, the more concern rises. The most recent works are also the most sardonic: Bastien Gachet has a radiator waves, who dances at the time of warming (Keep on dancing Denis2017), while Laurent Huret brings together sequences gleaned on the web in two videos where iPhone are melted, crushed, crushed, destroyed (series iPhone Torture, 2025 et 2019) and that Lou Masduraud, concocts a Escape (2023)through a sigh in the cellar which opens on an elsewhere possible (but in trompe-l’oeil): “Post Tenebras Lux?”
Some tracks are therefore taking shape from one piece to another, but rather than a story, it is above all here to exhibit Geneva artistic “moments”. The choice of works, moreover, is also collective, involving the whole Mamco team who drew both from the museum’s collections as from the contemporary art fund of the city of Geneva or in the collections of individuals or artists.
“PSOT NETEBRAS XUL”, MAMCO X SOMA, rue de l’Avenir 32 in Geneva, from August 14 to September 7, 2024. Round table with Emilie Ding, Bastien Gachet and Lou Masduraud, moderate by Julien Fronsacq, curator at Mamco, August 21 at 6.30pm.