News from Mount Analogue

The surrealist writer René Daumal (1908-1944) left his novel, Mount Analogue, unfinished. Its full title was A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures and it described the discovery of an island in the middle of which stood the world's tallest mountain, “linking heaven and earth”. Even though the summit seemed beyond reach, its lower slopes could be climbed since according to Daumel, “the doorway to the invisible must be visible”.

In the early seventies, Slovak artist Július Koller (1939-2007) founded the “U.F.O. Gallery Ganek” on the Ganek Peak of the Upper Tatras Mountains in Slovakia, a place situated between “heaven and earth”. Physically inaccessible, the gallery was only partially fictional because exhibiting artists could build it in their mind's eye, turning it into an intellectual refuge, a space of freedom devoid of any frontiers. The exhibition at Rochechouart underlines parallels between Daumal's novel and Koller's project (the museum has recently acquired a large collection of the latter's works), and may be read as a homage to the artist and his utopian vision. More than thirty pieces drawn from the museum's collection or loaned by other galleries provide a survey of invisible subjective Utopian or fictional spaces that can nevertheless be shared or inhabited by our own thoughts. Included are works by Robert Barry, Marius Boezem, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Ian Hamilton Fi nlay, Dora Garcia, Mario Garcia-Torres, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Raoul Hausmann, Július Koller, Marcel Märien, Roman Ondak, Nam June Paik, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Tobias Rehberger, Ed Ruscha, a set of artists' books by Seth Siegelaub plus the secret door used by 18th century French economist and statesman Anne Robert Jacques Turgot.

The Musée départemental d’art contemporain de Rochechouart is an initiative of the Conseil général de la Haute-Vienne. Those exhibitions were made possible through the support of the Minister of Culture (DRAC Limousin).

News from Mount Analogue

mit Robert Barry, Marius Boezem, Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Dora Garcia, Mario Garcia Torres, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Raoul Hausmann, Julius Koller, Marcel Märien, Roman Ondák, Nam June Paik, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Tobias Rehberger, Ed Ruscha, Seth Siegelaub