Galerie Anne Barrault invites one curator, who in turn invites 11. This group show will act as a game between these 12 curators, who wish to remain anonymous.


Rather than conceiving of a group exhibition whose content would lie in the articulation of a single concept and the linear juxtaposition of works, this project engages in a collective and dynamic process. The game set in motion summons up different exhibition formats (group and solo shows, white cube and installation) and questions production structures (exchange, storage, hanging, curating, etc.). The project involves the viewer, the gallery, the artists and the guest curators.

12 international curators have been invited to take part in the exhibition. These curators have different profiles: some are independent, others work for renowned private or public collections, in prestigious foundations and museums. All have engaged in a collective conversation around the exhibition: they have undertaken a game of “dominoes”. The first curator and instigator of the exhibition selected a work and sent it to a second curator, who in turn responded with another work. The third curator responded to the two previous proposals, adding one of his own, and so on, until 12 works had been selected by the 12 curators. In this way, each curator responded to, completed and gave direction to the group exhibition. The exhibition then resembled a sentence to which each participant added a word. All agreed to remain anonymous, and none of them (with the exception of the instigator) knew the other curators involved.

Sarah Tritz was asked to design an environment, a global proposition that would host the group exhibition thus constituted. She produces the storage. Every 48 hours, one of the works is extracted from the group and placed in a different, untouched space, a “White Cube”. All the works are shown only once in the White Cube, separately. The process continues until each work has been shown on its own, once. When they have all been distinguished in this way, the event ends. The passage through the White Cube follows the curators' selection process: the last piece presented is also the last to have been selected.


When a work is exhibited in isolation, its content remains alien to the exhibition as a whole. When it is with the others, its content blends into the group. The system is both elegant and difficult. It does not yield to the immediate reading of a “theme”. Instead, it focuses on the underlying structure of each individual work and the collective project. It responds to Sarah Tritz's commission to create an installation for the group exhibition.

One of the participating curators says: “I like the idea of tension and exchange between the isolated work in the foreground and the image in the background, overflowing with seemingly stored works. Likewise, the alternation and dialogue of the isolated and exclusively staged works as a stream of ideas in a very long sentence is really interesting for following and analyzing the decisions that determined the choices. That's why I decided to take part!”


We would like to thank (once again) the curators who have chosen to remain anonymous: XX, XX, XX, XX, XX, XX, XX, XX, XX, XX, XX, XX and XX.