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Château

A. Sarkis

"Ailleurs, Ici"

published at 09/01/2014
"Ailleurs, Ici", installation de Sarkis pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2011 - © DR

THE WORK ON DISPLAY AT CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE IS A SPECIAL COMMISSION FROM THE CENTRE REGION (2011-2013)​

The 72 panes of stained glass, which have been specially created for the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire by Sarkis, establish a dialogue with those that are already there in the building. 
They use light to evoke the life and history of the place. By bringing together images which are fundamental for Sarkis, in some ways they constitute his imaginative museum.
Sarkis conceives this journey of light as an initiatory mental pathway through which visitors create their own story. He places his stained glass in front of each window on the first and second floor of the Château's south wing. These panels of light, revealing images of life and death, love and architecture, fix past histories and future visions in the present moment. Sarkis confronts images of ancient techniques, for instance a photograph of a mosaic, with an image evoking modernity. Sarkis is creating this new work in two stages.
In 2011, 40 panes of stained glass are being designed and installed in front of the windows of the south wing.
In 2012, 32 panes of stained glass will take their place in the Château's kitchens and basements.
 

"Rooms almost in ruins in a marvellous Château: this is the contrast which struck me on my first visit.

It had been snowing. There were hardly any visitors. There was a certain melancholy feel in almost all the rooms, both those open to the public and those that were closed to them.

We had started the tour of the Château with the rooms that are well fitted out and open to the public. Then, we had gone on through rooms almost in ruins and closed to visitors, where abandoned objects awaited us. The walls breathed time, the past. The rooms had not been heated for decades – I remember going up to a small window and looking out; the snowy landscape seemed as if it had been fixed for a really long time under a changing light. Fixed images which would change with the light, these later transformed, giving birth to the idea of stained glass.

A scenario was about to take shape. I would invite people to take a walk to the abandoned rooms, I would only change or touch very few things, sometimes I wouldn’t even let the visitors go in, keeping them on the threshold looking at the interior of the room like a stage set… Suddenly, you would catch sight of a pane of stained glass hanging in front of a window, like an actor in counterpoint. New stained glass, with its ancient technique and its contemporary image, evoking the vast richness of our culture, of all times, of all places, of here and elsewhere:  a cherry tree in blossom in a Japanese garden, an abandoned palace beside a lake in Ahmedabad, a sunset at Nordland, the section of the Carrara white marble mountain, the face of an Indian dancing girl in the rain, Liebeskind’s architecture of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, a well amidst greenery in Tuscany, the resurrection of a person from the dead in a film by Dreyer, 12 candles in an old church in Armenia, the birth of a new architecture on the borders of an old district in England, the dance of a Shaman tribe, the face of a man looking at us in huge close-up, the snowy landscape seen from a small window in the Château de Chaumont…

Each of the windows in the rooms, amidst a state of abandon, would have its suspended stained glass, lit by natural daylight and another, artificial light. Both light sources would give birth to other lights. An acutely rich image, fixed in the stained-glass technique, but also moving thanks to the light sources. 

In the first year, at the time of the opening in April 2011, 40 panes of stained glass will be hung in place, including 10 which will be made on site. 32 panes of stained glass will be designed in the second year.

The panes of stained-glass do not tell a story, they are open to the history of our world, to thousands upon thousands of images." Sarkis

Biographical NOTES

Sarkis
TURKEY

Serkis Zabunyan, known as Sarkis (his Christian name), is a French artist of Armenian descent who was born in Istanbul in Turkey in 1938. He started to paint at a very early age and supplemented this by studying interior architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul. He also studied at the Saint-Michel French Senior High School and got a degree from Mimar Sinan University.
Legend has it that Sarkis, whose real name is Zabunyan, saw the start of his career with Edvard Munch's The Scream, when as a sixteen-year-old from Istanbul he came face to face with the Norwegian expressionist’s painting. The idea of being a painter really made an impression on him and he exhibited his first obscure, oracular gouaches, while he was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul. However, we had to wait until 1962 for Zabunyan to become Sarkis: and it was not just his name that was to change after the artist, who is of Armenian descent, arrived in France on the eve of the May revolutions, it was his whole artistic expression. He put the conceptual stamp on his work when he launched his first exhibition Do you know Beuys? at the May Salon in 1967: from then on, Sarkis has had an ongoing dialogue with the history, artists and works which have had a profound effect on his creative path. The following year, he was already refining his sensory and enigmatic installations, by working with light, sounds and materials (felt, neons, unusual antiques…), which later became his trademarks. He taught at the Decorative Arts School in Strasbourg during the 1980s and then did a series of exhibitions in France and abroad from 1990 onwards. After the Liechtenstein Palace in Vienna (1995) and the Mamco in Geneva (1996), and in addition to the Istanbul Biennale (2009), Sarkis was invited to adorn the contemporary art museum in Lyon (2002), the Louvre (2007) and the Pompidou Centre, which dedicated a major individual exhibition to him in 2010.
Since 16 February 2011, the Mamco in Geneva has been home to the “Hôtel Sarkis” exhibition, bringing together the majority of Sarkis’s works that evoke creative people (musicians, painters, film-makers, philosophers, sculptors, writers, etc.).

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Artothèque du Limousin, France
Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, Istanbul, Turkey
CAPC / Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, France
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Contemporary Art departmental funds, France
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection, Turkey
Eric Fabre Collection
FACLIM / Fonds d'art contemporain des communes du Limousin, Limoges, France
Le Magasin - National Centre for Contemporary Art, Grenoble, France
MAC Lyon / Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France
MAC/VAL Museum of Contemporary Art of the Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France
MAMCO / Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva, Switzerland
MOMA / Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Municipal Fund of Contemporary Art, Paris, France
Musée Greuze, Tournus, France
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg, France
Museum of Modern Art Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Museum of Modern Art, Céret, France
National Centre for Visual Arts
Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, Australia
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Alsace, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Aquitaine, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Auvergne, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Bretagne, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Franche-Comté, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Ile de France, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Languedoc-Roussillon, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Lorraine, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Poitou-Charente, France
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Rhône-Alpes, France
SantralIstanbul, Istanbul, Turkey
Schaulager - Emmanuel Hoffmann Foundation, Münchenstein, Switzerland
The Modern Museum in Sweden - Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Complete Biography

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2011 
Opus II, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France
Hotel Sarkis, Mamco, Geneva, Switzerland
 
2010
Sarkis, Passages, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Opus, Galerist Istanbul, Turkey
A Cage Roaratorio, IRCAM, Paris, France
Bir Ikona, Kazim Taskent Galerisi, Istanbul, Turkey
 
2009
d’après et après, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France 
ring portrets, Galerie de Zaal, Delft, The Netherlands
ekphrasis, Galerie Art & Essai, Rennes, France
 
2008
Landscape Forever, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Dans la nuits des images, Nef du Grand Palais, Paris, France
 
2007
Inclinaison, Musée Bourdelle, Paris, France
Rencontre avec Uccello, Grünewald, Munch, Beuys, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
IKONEN, Bode Museum, Berlin, Germany
 
2006
Alive and After , San Francisco Art Institute, USA
 
2004
148 IKONAS, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany
 
2003
Voyages en aquarelles, Galerie de France, Paris, France
L'atterrissage, adagio et L'atelier d'aquarelle dans l'eau, Musée Picasso, Antibes, France
 
2002
Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France
Le voyage. Le soleil. L'obscurité, Musée d'Art Moderne de Céret, France
Ikones dans la Chapelle, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
 
2000
SARKIS 21.01.2000 - 09.04.2000, CAPC Musée Bordeaux, France
 
1999
L'écho de ma main, MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland
 
1998
Les films tournés à Saché, Atelier Calder, Saché, France
 
1997
AU COMMENCEMENT, LE SON DE LA LUMIERE, A L'ARRIVEE, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France
 
1995
Das Licht des Blitzes, Der Lärm des Donners, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria; Palais Liechtenstein, Vienna, Austria
 
1990
Ma Chambre de la Rue Krutenau à San Lazzaro, (La 2ème Interprétation), San Lazzaro dei Armeni, Venice Biennial, Italy
 
1986
A quoi bon la lumière, Ecole Nationale d’Art Décoratif, Limoges, France
 
1984
La Fin des Siècles, Le Début des Siècles, ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
 
1981
K, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland
 
1979
Réserves Accessibles, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
DER BLACKOUT IST VOLLER SCHWARZER BLAUER ROTER GOLDENER FARBE SO WIE DER ANSTREICHER, Neue Galerie, Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen, Germany
 
1978
KRIEGSSCHATZ KLASSENKRIEG, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany
 
1976
Autopsie d’une peinture anonyme murale en face de la Base Sous-marine à Bordeaux, CAPC de Bordeaux, France
 
1973
La Drama of the Tempest, Musée Galliera, Paris, France
 
1972
Opération Organe, Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2010
….une collection, MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland
IN DEN SCHLUCHTEN DES BALKAN, Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel, Germany
Boîtes, Musée d’Art Moderne, ARC 2, Paris, France
La Coleccion Sonnabend, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Tactics of Invisibility, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria
Nomos et Physis, Galerie UQAM, Montreal, Canada
Violet de Bayeux, Le Hangar. Bayeux, France
 
2009
Le cri du paysage, GalerieofMarseille, Marseille, France
Altin Iskele (l'échaffaudage en or), Atik Valide Kulliyesi, Uskudar, Istanbul, Turkey
Sarkis Yildiz'da, Galerie Yuksel Sabanci, Université Yildiz, Istanbul, Turkey
Litanies, Nuit Blanche, La Grande Mosquée de Paris, France
Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France
Europe XXL Istanbul, Traversée, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
 
2008
L’art contemporain de Georges Perec, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France
En perspective, Giacometti, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen, France
 
2007
Moscow Moscou, Russia
La Suite des Innocents, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France
10th Istanbul Biennale, Turkey
 
2006
La Force de l’Art, Grand Palais, Paris, France
Rencontre Sarkis/Kramer, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
 
2005
LICHTKUNST, ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany
« R.W. – 1 + 2 contrepoints », MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland
 
2004
5th Cetinje Biennale, Montenegro
Call me Istanbul, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
 
2002
Le Diaphane & l'Obscur, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
Les années 70, l'art en cause, CAPC Musée de Bordeaux, France
 
1990
12th International Biennale of Drawings, Museum of Modern Art, Rijeka, Yugoslavia
 
1989
Les Magiciens de la Terre, Centre Georges Pompidou et La Grande Halle de la Villette, Paris, France
 
1988
Collection Sonnabend, CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Entrepôt Laîné, Bordeaux, France
Meltem, Le Magasin / Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France
 
1987
Sarkis Dreams (avec Amer, Bougeard, Davis, Jezequel, Emilsson, Caty, Ramette, Trouvé, Faessler, Simonnet, Caminiti, Maegerlin, Guillotin, Sommerhalter), Villa Arson, Nice, France
 
1986
Collection Souvenir, Le Nouveau Musée, Villeurbanne, France
 
1983
Rupture Pas Rupture, Centre Culturel Le Parvis, Tarbes, France
 
1978
The Record as Artwork (from Futurism to Conceptual Art), The Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, USA; Texas Moor College of Art Gallery, Philadelphia, USA; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal, Canada; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA
 
1977
DOCUMENTA VI, Kassel, Germany
 
1976
Identité / Identification, CAPC de Bordeaux et Palais des Beaux-Arts de Brussels, Belgium
The Artist and The Photograph, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
 
1971
Boltanski, Borgeaud, Le Gac, Tysh, Cadere, Sarkis , Centre Culturel Américain, Paris, France
 
1970
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
 
1969
Quand les Attitudes deviennent Formes, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany; I.C.A, London, United Kingdom
 
1966
Salon de la Jeune Peinture, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, France

On the web

Sarkis
"Ailleurs, Ici", installation de Sarkis pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2011 - © DR
"Ailleurs, Ici", installation de Sarkis pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2012 - © Éric Sander
"Ailleurs, Ici", installation de Sarkis pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2012 - © Éric Sander
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