Conference ‘Conceptual art and infinity’ by Michel Tombroff at 3pm.
Michel Tombroff (b. 1964, Belgium) is an artist whose practice is at the intersection of mathematics, abstract and conceptual art, evolutionary theory, philosophy and logic.
“An art object is a risky statement. Whatever its form, this statement is a promise of infinity.
Modern art has dazzled us with a constellation of such promises: ‘the ontological certainty of Malevich’s or Mondrian’s geometries, the power of Kupka’s and Rothko’s great and pure contrasts of sufficient colour, the legitimacy of Kandinsky’s connection of signs, the closed effervescence of Pollock’s gesture, Moore’s colossal maternities, Brancusi’s pure signs’. (Alain Badiou, Circonstances 2, Éditions Léo Scheer, 2004)
At the postmodern turning point in the 1960s, however, conceptual art embarked on the structuralist trajectory of language, tautology and repetition, all potential obstacles to this promise of infinity. Despite this, the works of Roman Opalka, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Sol Lewitt, Manfred Mohr, Robert Barry and many others escape finitude and manage to point to the absolute indicated by the moderns.
How does conceptual art fulfil this promise? How do conceptual works of art, using the very materials of finitude, manage to point towards the infinite?”
Michel Tombroff proposes to answer these questions in this lecture at Fondation CAB.
The lecture will be given in French.
The conference costs €6 (€3 for students) and gives access to the Richard Nonas exhibition.
Free for Museum Pass holders, Members & Friends
