a minima

a minima is an exhibition that gathers publications made of silence, publications that shift the practice of reading. mostly coming from a private collection and enriched with selected loans, the exhibition freely traverses 150 years of publishing, from 1876 to the present.

foundational figures—mallarmé, duchamp—emerge faintly. but it is above all the conceptual gesture, which took shape in the second half of the 20th century and was extended by concrete poetry and the artist’s book, that unfolds here.

the exhibition features works by over a hundred creators, including amélie de beaufort, barbara schmidt-heins, bernard villers, bruno munari, daniel gustav cramer, elisabeth tonnard, elsa werth, giovanni anselmo, george maciunas, herman de vries, irma blank, jiří valoch, jonathan monk, john cage, josé luis castillejo, kimsooja, marcel broodthaers, micah lexier, michel françois, monika droste and guy rombouts, nathalie czech, peter downsbrough, raphaël van lerberghe, sara mackillop, simon cutts…

here, the book does not tell a story: it suggests, it holds back, it resists.

each work, in its starkness, opens a space. reading becomes an act of attention, emotion, critique—sometimes even subversion.

curated by didier decoux