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It Never Ends
John M Armleder & Guests
This event ran from 24.09.2020 to 27.12.2020. But wait, there's always more at Kanal! Check out the calendar.
Originally scheduled for spring 2020, It Never Ends, carte blanche to John M Armleder, will now open in a revised and extended version on 24 September. The Swiss artist will take over the six floors of the Showroom for a period of seven months, before conversion works take place and before the reopening of the premises. This vast interdisciplinary project, entrusted to one of the major artists of the contemporary arts scene, is the confirmation of KANAL-Centre Pompidou’s commitment to experimentation and openness.
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Painter, sculptor, installation designer, performer, archivist, curator, collector, publisher, bookseller, gallerist and more, John M Armleder (b. 1948, lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland) is one of the defining figures of the last 50 years in art. At KANAL-Centre Pompidou, the artist is invited to take over the Showroom areas of the former Citroën garage for more than six months: on the six rough floors, Armleder proposes, in dialogue with a series of new monumental installations that he specifically designed for the site, a constellation of exhibitions, events and meetings offering the opportunity to plunge into his world and that of those he loves.
Between invitations to other artists and nods to his influences, discoveries of forgotten figures and unexpected retrospectives, out-of-the-ordinary performances and concerts of experimental music, It Never Ends is a multidimensional and lively artistic proposal in constant movement. This is the most ambitious project Armleder has been asked to design to date. It Never Ends is a paradoxical proposition: it is a solo exhibition, but composed by multiple authors. It is, in a sense, a ‘Chinese portrait’ of its creator, for whom questions of hospitality, collaboration and friendship have always been central.
The exhibition, structured according to three main sequences (April–June, July–August, September–October), themselves subdivided into programmes with varying rhythms and designed to bring the exhibition to life, will moreover be inhabited, activated and transformed continuously by a programme of concerts, performances and meetings, a programme which fills different spaces according to the artists’ proposals. Organized on a weekly basis, and designed by the artist with the same level of importance as the exhibitions, this ‘live’ programme will host a nightly event every Thursday, linked to three themed weekends throughout the project.
