Centre Pompidou Presents Exhibition-Workshop by Françoise Pétrovitch - Slipping Through

Image: Françoise Pétrovitch, « Imagine le cerveau d'une fourmi » (extrait)

Françoise Pétrovitch presents an installation in which the familiar characters of her visual world come to life in three dimensions. Lines, strokes, colour and drawings take on unique shapes in three dimensions, and invite you to explore a curious forest. Discover a wonderland, a world of giant plants, animals and humans which flourish and invade the area like a strange horde. With this installation, Françoise Petrovitch examines the idea of the individual or family portrait, which is funny, grotesque, playful or neutral, but never melancholic.

Françoise Pétrovitch, « Imagine le cerveau d'une fourmi » (extrait)

Lines, strokes, colours and drawing take on original three-dimensional forms here, inviting you to stroll through a strange forest and to venture through the looking glass.

By invitation of the Centre Pompidou, artist Françoise Pétrovitch proposes an installation for the Galerie des Enfants in which the familiar characters from her artistic world come to live in three dimensions. Lines, strokes, colours and drawing take on original forms here, in three dimensions and invite you to stroll through a strange forest and to venture through the looking glass. Like Alice, discover a wonderland, an outsized vegetal, animal and human world that prospers and invades space like an offbeat gang. You will feel very small in the midst of these giant figures!

These colourful shapes overlooking the Galerie des Enfants attract your attention as soon you enter the Centre Pompidou. A red figure with an intense expression and a mysterious smile invites you to wander with your family through this forest of images, designed as a promenade. Let yourself be surprised by changes in scale and reversed points of view, and engage in an infinite game of hide and seek. A three-metre tall mushroom, a tiny marmoset, a giant glove, disproportionate heads of fawns or snowmen are thus encountered in the Galerie des Enfants and create a fantastical and colourful world.

The silhouettes of these gigantic figures reach out their arms, inviting you to play. Whether lying on your tummy, kneeling or on tiptoe, use the mischievously positioned cut-out boards and become a part of the scenery. Continue this bodily transformation by using magnetic forms with surprising graphics and create your own universe. All you have to do is pose for the photo! You can also take out your pencils and notebooks and sketch some portraits, from near or far, and see who's biggest.

With this exhibit, Françoise Pétrovitch questions the idea of the individual or family portrait, whether funny, grotesque, fantastical or neutral, but never melancholic.

Exhibition-workshop by Françoise Pétrovitch

Slipping Through

Until 24 February, 2020