Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2024
Philippe Parreno, Membrane, 2023, cybernetic structure with sensorimotor capabilities and generative language processing; courtesy of the artist, © Philippe Parreno
Dance with Daemons
The Tower
Main Gallery
From
to
Dance with Daemons is a major experimental exhibition that explores the interconnections between art and reality and the ways in which artists’ works relate to each other.
Through immersive installations, as well as paintings, sculptures, photographs, and new technologies, the exhibition brings together a diverse network of more than fifty contemporary artists who have defined the development of current cultural practices.
The exhibition seeks to address the evolving character of art through site-specific installations, offering a unique approach to the display and experience of art. Its title will change over the course of the exhibition, following suggestions made by the participants and curators involved in the project.
The exhibition brings together for the first time significant artworks from the Fondation Beyeler collection alongside loans from Maja Hoffmann / LUMA Foundation in a groundbreaking display created by Tino Sehgal and conceived as a chain reaction, in which each artwork becomes the continuation of another. Photographs, paintings, and sculptures follow one another and respond to each other according to principles of difference and repetition, addressing notably portraiture, architecture, and abstraction.
Interspersed throughout the Main Gallery space of The Tower and in the landscaped areas around the pond of the Parc des Ateliers, Dance with Daemons offers a multi-sensorial, playful, and innovative art experience. Included in the exhibition are sculptures that look at each other rather than at the audience, installations that react to the environment, that learn a language or influence dreams. Like a living organism, the exhibition offers a more sensitive approach to art, proposing a vision of a world in motion and in perpetual transformation. The novel approach to art and its display questions and reinvents some of the canonical perceptions of exhibition-making and its history.
A series of installations by Carsten Höller, Adam Haar, Pierre Huyghe, Cildo Meireles, Federico Campagna, and Dozie Kanu aim to challenge normative perceptions of time, space, and reality. They function as an invitation to discovery and imagination. In the Parc des Ateliers, installations by Fujiko Nakaya, Precious Okoyomon, and Philippe Parreno interact with the environment, creating unique experiences that respond to the specificity of the park.
The conception of the exhibition is inspired by the experimental projects that were staged with the support of the LUMA Foundation in Arles and other cities over the past fifteen years. These include Il Tempo del Postino (Manchester, 2007; Basel, 2009), To the Moon via the Beach (Arles, 2012) and Solaris Chronicles (Arles, 2014). The first iteration of Dance with Daemons was presented during summer 2024 at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel.
On May 2, 2025, a series of conversations will be organized to mark the opening of the exhibition.
The exhibition is organized by LUMA Arles, in partnership with Fondation Beyeler.
At LUMA Arles, the exhibition is organized by Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Artistic Director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles, Tino Sehgal, Curator, Flora Katz, Curator, and Franny Tachon, Assistant Curator. At Fondation Beyeler, the exhibition was curated by Sam Keller, Mouna Mekouar, Isabela Mora, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Precious Okoyomon, Philippe Parreno and Tino Sehgal in close collaboration with the participants.