French Mega-Collector François Pinault to Display Works from His Collection in Germany

The exhibition marks the first time his collection is shown in the country.

Francois Pinault attends the presentation of the project to install his art collection at the Paris Commercial Exchange on April 27, 2016. Photo Chesnot/Getty Images.

François Pinault, the French mega-collector and billionaire owner of Christie’s, is set to display works from his extensive contemporary art collection for the first time in Germany, in an exhibition titled “Dancing with Myself” at the Museum Folkwang in Essen.

“Dancing with Myself”—a title borrowed from a Billy Idol song—will gather over 100 works from the Pinault collection by artists such as Roni Horn, Rodney Graham, Steve McQueen, Ulrike Rosenbach, and Lili Reynaud-Dewar. The featured works centre around the idea of self-representation with a whole room dedicated to American photographer Cindy Sherman, the Art Newspaper reports.

The exhibition will feature key figures from 20th and 21st century art, including a video installation by Pinault favorite, Bruce Nauman, called For Beginners (All the Combinations of the Thumb and Finger) (2010), which shows Nauman making each of the 31 possible finger positions on his hand. The video was snapped up by the French collector in 2011.

Pinault will also display Maurizio Cattelan’s disturbing sculptural self-portrait, We (2010). Pieces from the Folkwang Museum collection, which holds a substantial number of 19th-century German and French paintings, will also be on view.

Organizers have said that the exhibition will be “a wild, playful, poetic, and political dance through contemporary art moving from the late 1960s up to our own time,” according to TAN.

In April, the art world titan announced plans to open a museum in an 18th century stock exchange building in Paris in 2018.

The city agreed to lease the venue, situated in the historic neighbourhood of Les Halles, to Pinault on the condition that he undertake necessary restoration work, which will be overseen by Pritzker Prize winning architect Tadao Ando.

Meanwhile, Pinault continues to show his works at the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana in Venice, renovations to which were also overseen by Ando.

Dancing with Myself” will be on view at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, from October 7, 2016 to January 5, 2017.


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