The non-profit Fondation Cartier in Paris, a center for the creation and exposition of contemporary art, celebrates its 30th anniversary this month with a new multisensory installation conceived by renowned Argentinian artist, Guillermo Kuitca. Opening this October, ‘The Inhabitants’ will immerse the viewer in Kuitca’s world of optical illusions, where works by American artist Vija Celmins will converse with paintings by David Lynch. Inspired by Lynch’s life-size living room from the exhibition ‘The Air is on Fire’ at the Foundation in 2007, this project will transform the entire lower level of the iconic building in Paris into Guillermo Kuitca’s universe.

Argentinean painter Guillermo Kuitca presents an installation illustrating the history of the foundation and its unique way of establishing relationships between artists and artworks, encouraging encounters, and making connections from one project to the next over the years. Occupying the entire lower level of the Fondation Cartier, this work is entitled Inhabitants, borrowing from the film of the same name by Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian. Through this work created especially for the occasion, Guillermo Kuitca plunges visitors into an audiovisual environment, building an intricate network between his own art and that of David Lynch, Vija Celmins, Patti Smith and Artavazd Pelechian.

The idea for Inhabitants came from David Lynch’s life-sized recreation of a living room, inspired by one of his own small drawings. For Guillermo Kuitca, whose work is filled with references to theatrical interiors, seeing David Lynch’s 2007 exhibition The Air is on Fire at the Fondation Cartier, where the living room was shown for the first time, was an important experience that struck a profound chord. Guillermo Kuitca further explores this encounter by inviting visitors to rediscover a concert given by Lynch and Patti Smith at the Fondation Cartier on October 28, 2011 as part of the Mathematics, A Beautiful Elsewhere exhibition. Guillermo Kuitca’s installation Inhabitants constantly plays on viewers’ sensations and creates optical illusions. It also invites visitors to reflect upon his oeuvre as a whole, characterized by references to maps and the intersection between places and things, as well as allusions to physical, mental and emotional territories in which the human figure is conspicuously absent. Inhabitants is inspired by the same spirit. Stimulating dialogue and making surprising multilayered connections between the works, artists and ideas presented, Inhabitants also reflects the unique manner in which the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain has operated for 30 years.

‘The Inhabitants’ will run until February 2015 alongside ‘Musings on a Glass Box’ by New York based architects Diller + Scofidio on the ground floor exhibition space of the Cartier Foundation.

THE INHABITANTS
An installation by Guillermo Kuitca
Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain
Boulevard Raspail, Paris
25 October 2014-22 February 2015