Raymond Hains

Displayed in structures reminiscent of billboards, these images represent what Hains refers to as “sidewalk sculptures”: found, fortuitous forms, elevated to the status of unintentional artworks and ready-made sculptures.

A keen walker and composer of associations, Raymond Hains constructs a network of correspondences in this installation. The title evokes Jacques Cartier, the navigator from Saint-Malo who discovered Canada; Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose photographic work profoundly influenced the artist; and of course, Jacques Cartier, head of the Maison Cartier who invited General de Gaulleto his London office in 1940 so that he could draft his famous Appeal of June 18th. This interplay of references resonates with the Grand Louvre construction site and the contemporary architecture of Jean Nouvel, architect of the Fondation Cartier. In 1987, Nouvel was behind a redevelopment project for the Tuileries Gardens, whose metal and tubular structures find a direct echo in Hains’s images.

Thirty years after the first presentation of Hains’s work, the relocation of the Fondation Cartier to the Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre, lends the installation a portentous dimension.