Superdome exhibition

“The Superdome is a mythical stadium: built in 1975 in New Orleans (Louisiana), it hosted numerous Super Bowls (the American football championship’s final), a Rolling Stones concert, Pope John Paul II, the Republican Convention and refugees of Hurricane Katrina. Paradoxical, the Superdome builds a bridge between the greatest entertainment and the greatest anguish. Inspired by its additional and schizophrenic logic, mixing "I can get no satisfaction" AND "Our Father in heaven", Marc-Olivier Wahler puts forward SUPERDOME: a new session composed of five solo exhibitions balancing between entertainment and desolation, decibels and prayers, high-tech and chaos, as the continuation of a program testing the notion of the elasticity of art which started at the Palais de Tokyo with Five Billion Years.”

http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/superdome/index.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0829_050829_superdome.html

http://imomus.livejournal.com

http://flickr.com/photos/67968452@N00/2560697103

Imagine this installation of Darth Vader army in a pavilion constructed for the international exhibition of 1937 and transformed 2002 into a modern, brutal impressive space. Experienced in real, it is frightening. And it leaves you thinking about our culture, where even pop became horrifying, where our associations blend pictures of Mickey Mouse with adult comics, animation films, horror films, where no innocent icon exists anymore. Sarcastic disillusionment might be quite a productive state of mind and superposed iconic images might in the end show a glimpse of truth. A majestic, authoritarian pavilion built for the international exhibition of 1937, renovated 2002 in a sober, modern brutal aesthetic, a name of a building evoking tragedy and failure, architecture as a symbol, a trap, bigness in good and bad times and Darth Vader multiplied in army formation, taking up a whole room, the music filling the remaining heights.

Architecture is a unique expression of power. Even in times when everyone can express himself, not everyone gets the same amount of space. For me personally, this exhibition is incredibly inspiring leaving a bitter aftertaste. It is showing important physical phenomena and it reminds the viewer to watch out – not only for Mickey’s smile, but also for its size.