L'éternité
“It’s been found again.
What? Eternity.
It’s the sea uniting with the sun.”
Excerpt from L’éternité by Arthur Rimbaud
VILLEPIN is pleased to announce L’éternité, a group exhibition featuring our artists Zao Wou-Ki, Myonghi Kang, and Marie de Villepin, alongside works by Georges Mathieu, Miquel Barceló, and Ida Yukimasa among others.
Referencing Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “L’éternité”, the exhibition examines the temporal and ephemeral qualities of art throughout history. The speaker in the poem explores the concept of eternity through fleeting instants, specifically a delicate moment in passing when the sea unites with the sun, and eventually finds hope in his rediscovery. He learns that eternity can be found in daily observations and in memories.
Throughout history, eternity has also been widely discussed in tandem with art, where each work of art exists as a record of the maker’s expression and spirit at a single precise moment. Art historian Ernst Gombrich discusses the notion of art for eternity in the earliest creations of monuments and portraiture in Egyptian art, in which the artist tries to preserve a fleeting expression through the observation of nature.
L’éternité rediscovers the concept of eternity through each artist’s visual dynamism across multiple generations. After the pandemic, we have become more aware of the fragility of time and life.
Each artist featured in the exhibition transcends the passage of time as they use different techniques to convey a sense of motion, change, and transience. Whether it is within the structured stanza of a poem, or a frame of a canvas, each selection of a word and a brushstroke becomes a physical embodiment of a continuing process. Deciphering sensations around nature and eternity, the exhibition examines our changing attitudes toward the perception of time.
Exhibition Opening: 14 March – 16 April, 2023
Space: 53-55 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong
Sunday - Wednesday | 11AM to 6PM (By appointment only)
Thursday - Saturday | 11AM to 7PM (Open to Public)
