Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy

About

With Eleanor Bauer, Andrew Champlin, Sherwood Chen, Lindsay Clark, Alex Escalante, Ben Evans, Moriah Evans, Bryana Fritz, Michael Helland, K.J. Holmes, Iréne Hultman, Columbine Macher, Oisin Monaghan, Katy Pyle, Will Rawls and Takahiro Yamamoto.

MoMA PS1 presents Retrospective, the inaugural US museum survey of French artist and choreographer Xavier Le Roy (b. 1963). Realized in the galleries by a team of performers who continuously recycle and transform Le Roy's past solo work the exhibition opens up expanded opportunities for interaction within the museum. In his reconfiguration of the conventionally linear form of the retrospective as an accumulative mid-career survey, Le Roy brings his past works to life by consolidating and reimagining them into a new whole. In the process the exhibition unfolds across several different time axes that introduce temporal complexity to the galleries: the period during which Le Roy conceived the referenced solo works (1994–2010), the duration of the individual gallery visits, the performers’ daily labor time, and lastly the transformation and development the exhibition undergoes over the course of its two month run. The result is a groundbreaking hybrid of choreography and visual art that transforms the traditional exhibition format into a creative medium.

In conjunction with Retrospective, Xavier Le Roy presents his solo work, Product of Circumstances, 1999, as part of Sunday Sessions on Sunday October 12, 3 PM, the VW Dome.

Retrospective is organized at MoMA PS1 by Jenny Schlenzka, Associate Curator and Alex Sloane, Curatorial Assistant.

The exhibition was originally organized by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona at the invitation of Laurence Rassel.

Retrospective is presented at MoMA PS1 as part of Crossing the Line 2014, a festival created and organized by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF).

Crossing the Line is the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)’s annual fall festival presenting interdisciplinary works and performances created by artists from around the world in New York. The festival provides opportunities for New Yorkers to explore the dialogue between artist and participant, examine how artists help re-imagine the world, and engage in the vital role artists play as critical thinkers and catalysts for social evolution. Crossing the Line is initiated and produced by FIAF in partnership with leading cultural institutions and takes place this year from September 8–October 18, 2014.

The presentation at MoMA PS1 is made possible by MoMA's Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.

Additional support is provided by the MoMA PS1 Annual Exhibition Fund and the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and the Institut français within the framework of the TransARTE program.

Presentations of Retrospective are supported, in part, by FUSED: French U.S. Exchange in Dance, a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange), with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional funding from the Florence Gould Foundation; and with support from the Institut français through the TransARTE program.