A powerful installation ‘Personnes’ (People) from Christian Boltanski at the Grand Palais for the annual Monumenta program. At the entry to the exhibition stands a sad and anonymous wall of rusting lockers; once past these and into the Grand Palais’ huge, chilly space you are confronted with frighteningly bureaucratic arrangements, in perfectly aligned squares, of abandoned clothes. Small speakers attached to poles pump out the sound of human heartbeats (collected by Boltanski for his project ‘Les Archives du Coeur’). Then there’s an enormous mound of clothes over which a huge robot arm decends to grab a pile, rises up high, then releases them, spewing them back down to the top of the pile. You can’t help feeling like you’ve been transported back in time, to the Drancy camp in 1942, say. It feels good to get the hell out and back on to the Champs Elysées!
Until 21 Feb
www.monumenta.com/
Tout le monde se fout de Bol machinski. L’Etat ferait mieux d’offrir l’énorme budget de cette expo à ceux qui dorment dans la rue…!!