Remember Me review – narrow view of two photographic centuries is like a history of food in three ham sarnies
Bourse de Commerce, ParisThere are 700 works from François Pinault’s collection on display – more than half of them by Irving Penn – but it’s a blinkered selection and annoyingly didactic‘Beware … of assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle” scream the words of Aimé Césaire – writ large and bold by Barbara Kruger, in a giant installation, The History of Tears, that fills Bourse de Commerce’s spectacular Rotunda. Kruger’s angry, menacing, viscerally charged work – words as images, and large-scale video clips of people seething with self-hate – is a thrilling setup for Remember Me, an exhibition that promises a take on 200 years of photography through 700 works by more than 70 artists drawn from the collection of the French billionaire François Pinault. That excitement quickly dissipates as the exhibition moves on.This is the biggest photography show ever
Charlotte JansenPhotographyArt