Group Show: Masks

This exhibition gathers works made by influential artists from the French, English, German, American and African contemporary scenes.

An ornament, a disguise, a sculpture, a mortuary object, folkloric or spiritual, the mask is an eco-museum of its own. Whether it is created in an abstract contemporary way, conceptual or not, or as a reference to its traditional shape, the mask remains an enigmatic object which veils as much as it unveils the secrets of human consciousness.

In sculpture, the mask's status can be problematic. Is it an intermediary stage or a definitive work ? It is linked to the fragmentation of presentation, the decisive route to the revival of sculpture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

One of the major issues of the mask is the expression, or the absence of one: sculptors have always risen to the challenge of trying to restore this particular presence.

It was around 1906 that a new source of inspiration, coming from Africa, pushed aside the accepted rules of representation, and brought about a deconstruction of facial features. African masks, and masks then called "primitive" in general, finished the depersonalisation process of the portrait which had started in Europe. Picasso, Derain and Vlaminck were filled with enthusiasm for masks and sculptures in non-Western arts, which they perceived as the confirmation of their own desire for abstraction. As well as this breaking down of form, there was the fascination exercised by the supernatural dimension of these cult objects."