10.06.19-16.06.19

Mathias Pfund

Sport & Divertissement

Image © Baptiste Coulon

An exhibition by Mathias Pfund is presented on the top three floors of The Offhause Museum. Each one displays a different project: After Ecstasy, “At least we still have the Venice Biannale“ and After Ecstasy (Jet Lefuel).
The exhibited objects deal with the symbolic value of trophies:
After Ecstasy melts the shape of the Spirit of Ecstasy (the statuette displayed in the front of the Rolls Royce, which is itself inspired by the Victory of Samothrace) and “At least we sitll have the Venice Biannale” works as a montage operation from a replica of the medal of the summer Olympic games of 1924, in Paris.
Indeed, the tools of sculpture were represented on his reverse, as a witness to the Olympic Cultural Program (which included artistic competitions between 1912 and 1948).
On the upper floor, three sculptures from the After Ecstasy series are in display, evoking a sculpture gallery. The 2nd floor shows the medal “At least we still have the Venice Biannale” suspended in the exhibition space. The first floor takes advantage of the perspective created by the door leading to the Museum terrace and shows the acephalous sculpture of the After Ecstasy series on a specific plinth recalling the «Daru» staircase of the Louvre Museum.
On the one hand all the projects keep their original dimensions inside the architecture. On the other they rely on cultural objects produced out of a fascination for antiquity (the Spirit of Ecstasy as well as the Olympic Games) . They charge, with distance, the Offhause Museum of a Greco-Roman cultural footprint.
The title of the exhibition, although put in the singular, is borrowed from the cycle of the twenty one short pieces for piano written by Erik Satie, a musician who’s works sometimes refers, not without humor, to antiquity.