Bertrand Lavier in Dans l’air, les machines volantes

The inaugural exhibition pays tribute to the primary function of the place by choosing flying machines as its theme. Starting from the universal fascination of the human being for flight and the numerous inventions allowing to reach this objective, the curator of the exhibition Marie-Laure Bernadac, in collaboration with Blanche de Lestrange, focused on the way these means of elevation and transport in the air and their transformations over time have inspired artists. If the beginnings of these innovations could be found as early as the Renaissance in Leonardo da Vinci's sketches, and the advent of the first flying machines in the nineteenth century inspired the artistic avant-garde of the early twentieth century as much as many rough artists thereafter, it is also about fifty contemporary artworks made during the last three decades that the exhibition brings together here.

Beginning with a drawing of Jules Verne's great hot air balloon (Jorge Mendez Blake), the exhibition presents a selection of poetic paintings, (Devambez, Spillaert) contemplative or political videos, monumental sculptures playing on the misuse of machines, photographs or models. Dans l'air thus brings together major figures of international artistic creation such as Adel Abdessemed, Doug Aitken, Fiona Banner, Alighiero Boetti, Mircea Cantor, Ali Cheri, Sylvie Fleury, the duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Camille Henrot, Sophie Jung, Bertrand Lavier, Robert Longo, Ahmet Öğüt, Laure Prouvost, Shimabuku or Roman Signer, as well as art brut figures such as André Robillard, highlighting their shared interest in the history, technology, form and aesthetics, function or symbolism of these flying objects. The exhibition also highlights fascinating objects and collections around the flying object, planes, airships, collections around the Balloonmania, wind tunnel models, collections of the Museum of Air and Space and archival images to pay tribute to the essential history of this building in aerostation and atraumatic.