EXPOSITION - ÉPROUVER L’INCONNU

Don't miss the next MO.CO. exhibition. "Experiencing the Unknown" from February 15 to May 18, 2025!

at the MO.CO., Éprouver l?inconnu brings together over one hundred works by some thirty artists, offering an open-ended, porous journey through materials, experiments, disciplines and eras, to put reality - or what we know of it - to the test.

In Chaos Theory (1987), James Gleick reminds us that the development of a scientific theory is often based on the repetition of experiments and the recurrence of an event. An isolated event is thus considered an error. However, in the research process, serendipity, chance discovery, accident and the acceptance of this hazard open up new paths that were beyond our predictions. This is the transition from the known to the unknown.

The artists in Éprouver l?inconnu sometimes come from scientific backgrounds, while others have collaborated with scientists or are simply passionate about one of these fields. They share a common interest in experimenting with the unknown through the misuse of scientific forms and processes.

Mary Maggic?s biohacking approach hacks into biology with a sense of humor, proposing ways of extracting ?strogens from our urine, Do It Yourself style, to emancipate ourselves from institutions. Candice Lin questions the hegemony of Western scientism, contextualizing knowledge and materials within the history of domination, via the process of fermenting tea into kombucha. Works produced specifically for the exhibition build bridges between disciplines. A new installation by Roy Köhnke, for example, offers a sensual approach to evolution and trans-species relations. Morgan Courtois designs a series of sculptures smeared with olfactory liquids, like portraits and sensory memories of his loved ones, hijacking the processes of the pharmaceutical and perfume industries. Joey Holder takes a speculative approach to zoology, imagining a multi-screen immersive installation with artificial intelligence, playing with our desires for control and our fears.

For this exhibition, MO.CO. wanted to welcome different generations of artists, from the figure of Bernard Palissy (16th century) to the young international scene (born in the 1990s), via some emblematic figures of contemporary art such as Nam June Paik, Tetsumi Kudo, Kiki Smith or Alina Szapocznikow. Some artists less identified with contemporary art have also joined the exhibition, such as Anna Zemánková, Lubo? Plný, HR Giger, Victorien Sardou and Emma Kunz.

Finally, the collections of the University of Montpellier underline the power of the cross-fertilization of knowledge and forms, as well as the importance of the markers of history (discoveries, concepts, objects), which are themselves sometimes doomed to a form of obsolescence.

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (October-May)

GOOD DEAL: Free admission to MO.CO. every 1st Sunday of the month. Admission and tours are free.

Open Friday November 1 from 11am to 6pm and closed Monday November 11.