Adieu, me dit cette pensée, je n’irai pas plus loin

Berger&Berger, 2018
Nouveau Musée National de Monaco
Villa Sauber, former house of French artist Robert Sauber (1868–1936)
curator : Marie-Claude Beaud

This quote comes from the text of Paul Valéry The problem of museums. With this text, Paul Valéry poses one of the essential issues of the museum, the opposition between the sensitive and the scientist, and allows to extend the reflection to the evolution of the museum during the twentieth century. Our project tries to reconcile these two notions.
The museum space in the 20th century has evolved considerably. The former studio of Villa Sauber and almost all the rooms bear witness to this. Originally largely glazed and overlooking the garden, they were gradually walled and "neutralized". Exhibition surfaces were won on the facade at the same time as the natural lighting was obscured in favor of artificial lighting. At the same time, false ceilings were created in order to conceal the air conditioning ducts and thus the moldings of the interior architecture. These rooms have gradually been transformed into neutral white boxes and controlled artificially.
It should read a trend of museographic presuppositions of the twentieth century that wanted the exhibition places in the tuning fork of the artists' studios where the works were produced as well as the increased conservation requirements of the works themselves, which must today be presented in an ad hoc exhibition climate. Applying a homogeneous light, controlled in intensity freed from the UV, a hygrometry at 50% and an air free of its potential aggressive agents, it introduces a double "neutralization", aesthetic and physical.
From the point of view of the museum space and a hypothesis of transformation of the museum, we propose to find a form of permeability between the climate of exposure and the climate of the outside as well as a dialogue reengaged with the architecture of Villa Sauber, in order to enrich the external / internal relations, natural / artificial, and consequently the conditions of exhibition and thus the perception and the very nature of the works.

Canal à Ouistreham. Temps gris
Francis Picabia, 1905. NMNM collection
Oil on canvas. 55,3 x 38,5 x 2,7 cm

L’œil humain
Berger&Berger, 2012
PVC colored adhesives, metal, fluorescent tubes. Dimensions variable.

Sans titre (K2O5Si2)
Berger&Berger, 2018
Photocatalytic paint and acrylic resin on canvas, 250 x 180 cm. Unique piece.

Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 09 h 42
Berger&Berger, 2015
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 10 h 37
Berger&Berger, 2015
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 11 h 02
Berger&Berger, 2015
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 11 h 25
Berger&Berger, 2015
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection
Majastres, 20 juillet 2014, 12 h 21
Berger&Berger, 2015
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 14 h 32
Berger&Berger, 2015
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 16 h 51
Berger&Berger, 2015
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 18h44
Berger&Berger, 2015
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection
8 digital photographic prints ink jet and silk screen prints thermochromic ink on baryta paper (40 x 32 cm). Edition of 1 + 1 EA. Courtesy of the artists.

Motif V
Denis Morog, 1972
Traditional concrete, sands and river aggregates rolled naturally. 3 x 30 x 66 cm. Unique piece.
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection

Sans titre
Denis Morog, c. 1973.
Study size for patterns, texture and relief in traditional concrete. Hot stamped polystyrene die casting with steel and bronze tools. 69 x 61 x 5 cm. Unique piece

Graziella (1260 - 1300)
Berger&Berger, 2018
60 stoneware modules (35 x 35 x 7.5 cm). Anagama kiln firings. 179 x 430 x 10 cm. Unique piece.

Paysage avec un berger
Berger&Berger, 2018
Glass, smoke-black, wrought iron. 190 x 75 x 25 cm. Unique piece

Fiducia in Dio
Lorenzo Bartolini, 1835
marble, 90 x 35 x 62 cm. Collection du NMNM

Les corniches
Berger&Berger, 2018
2 silk screen prints thermochromic ink on polyester canvas. 2 x (200 x 150 cm) Edition of 3 + 1 EA. Courtesy of the artists.
NMNM Nouveau Musée National de Monaco collection

Canal à Ouistreham. Temps gris
The works of Francis Picabia, from 1899 and for almost ten years, prolonged the inventions of the Impressionists and the scientific discoveries of Michel-Eugène Chevreul on light and colors.
The white frame of this painting, created especially for this exhibition, departs from the conventional formalizations of the gilt frame commonly adopted for "Impressionist" paintings in their time. The painters of that time have sought to renew their formalization by various methods of which they remain only a few testimonies. The frame became the very object of pictorial and chromatic research.

L’œil humain
The room, lit naturally, is affected by an artificial light and punctual from the ceiling but also by the diffuse from outside, through the window. Three primary colors of the additive synthesis are arranged on the glazing of the single bay of this room and reconstitute the chromatic spectrum. Natural light enhanced by electric light penetrates the space of the gallery through this inverted prism. Projected on walls and floor, this light associated with color filters creates gradually, a few centimeters from the bay, a synthetic white which is superimposed on the white walls of the gallery. L’œil humain engages color as an atmospheric element.

Sans titre (K2O5Si2)
This monochrome is made with a photocatalytic mineral paint - Paint based on potassium silicate in aqueous phase and water based acrylic resin. The paint contains a specific pigment acting by photocatalysis effect by destroying atmospheric pollutants. It has algicidal and germicidal properties under the action of light in the presence of oxygen and moisture, acting both on volatile organic compounds, on gases, odors, molds, fungi and even bacteria and viruses.

Three shades of white in this room: that of the painting of the walls of the gallery, that of the synthesis of the light coming from the window and that of the pictorial monochrome work. The monochrome created here, belongs to a paradigm posterior to that of the impressionists that Pasteur's discoveries on the invisible elements at work in the atmosphere have completely transformed.

Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 09 h 42
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 10 h 37
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 11 h 02
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 11 h 25
Majastres, 20 juillet 2014, 12 h 21
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 14 h 32
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 16 h 51
Trévans, 20 juillet 2014, 18h44
A serie of prints combining text and photographic images. This serie of works on paper tries to reconstruct the progress of a march made on July 20, 2014 in the gorges of Trevans, commune of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
This march involved the development of an artistic commission project in the landscape. Various geographic, geological, demographic, meteorological, and certain physiological data of the walker are associated with the shots.
This informations are silk screened with a reversible thermochromic ink, disappearing progressively above 21°C, the recommended temperature for the preservation of photographic prints.

Motif V
Sans titre
Fragments and prototypes, these objects are the work of the artist Denis Morog (1922 - 2003) and both form the elements of a material and plastic research on texture and light, associated with work on the large architectural scale and thoughts from the material and the processes that constitute it: the concrete and its implementation on site.

Graziella (1260 - 1300)
This work consists of 60 modules (35 x 35 x 7.5 cm) made of stoneware "Flambe" baked in an Anagama oven made for the occasion. The oven Anagama, small vaulted architecture formalizes a recumbent chimney in which the raw pieces are arranged for cooking. During the four days of cooking in continuous fire, the rooms are traversed by the flames thus achieving not only its material definition but also the finishes by the flow of flames in the oven. The cooking temperature is between 1260°C and 1300°C.
Graziella (1260 - 1300) puts in coherence a series of 60 identical modules which constitute a set arranged horizontally forming a fragmentary monolith.
This sculpture would act on the climate of this room of the museum, the mass of clay has the property of passively regulating hygrometry. The passive regulation of hygrometry is superimposed on the artificial one that the museum's air conditioning system allows.
Created with the collaboration of Robert Roy and Céline Linossier.

Paysage avec un berger
This sculpture is a resumption of the "claude glass" or black mirror, an instrument of observation created by the painter Claude Lorrain. The black mirror or mirror of Claude Lorrain is a small mirror, with a slightly convex surface and tinged with a dark color. Enclosed in a binding similar to that of a sketchbook or held in a holster with cover, this device was in the eighteenth century the tool of artists, travelers and lovers of landscape painting. The function of the black mirror is to present the subject to be treated isolated from its environment and to fold the tones of the pattern, thus allowing a rapid determination of an optimal framing and a better appreciation of the distribution of the values.
This sculpture constitutes a variation. The scale of the object is here more important and its use is sedentary and domestic. The observation here is limited to that of the museum's interior "landscape". The convex geometry of this glass part, initially flat glass sheet, is achieved by thermoforming. The opacity of the glass is obtained by the deposition of the carbon black. Combustion is also an artisanal operation of making the piece. The sculpture is located in the center of the exhibition hall, former studio of the painter Robert Sauber and facing east, towards Les corniches.

Fiducia in Dio
This sculpture is the most famous work of this nineteenth century neo-classical sculptor. In 1835, Bartolini was commissioned by Rosa Poldi Trivulzio to create a memorial for her late husband. The thermal conductivity of marble is 3 (W/mK).

Les corniches
This diptych consists of two silk screen prints restoring an image of Monaco Bay. The point of view of this photograph is similar to that of Le Corbusier, for his sketch, Ici mon cabanon (le terrain), ici le prince de Monaco (February 15, 1955). Le Corbusier draws this sketch from his Cabanon. Nearby was built 26 years before, the Villa E1027 by Eileen Gray. The new image is taken from the roof of this villa, his point of view also contains a background common to the painting painted by Monet, La baie de Monaco, in 1881 (NMNM collection). This common background is « le rocher ».
Each of the 3 Cyan, Magenta, Yellow (CMY) colors in digital photography is replaced by a black thermochromic ink. The thermochromic ink has the particularity of being thermosensitive. This varies reversibly depending on the temperature. Each of the silk screened thermochromic inks evolves at a specific temperature. All the inks constituting the image are visible below and up to 10°C; black ink replacing cyan disappears above 10°C; black ink replacing magenta, above 15°C; the black ink replacing the yellow disappears above 20°C. CMYK black is a standard black ink.

A window of this room remains open for the duration of the exhibition. The outside temperature varies between 13°C and -3°C during the winter.