GROUP EXHIBITION

Additionally, the exhibition features game tables where visitors areinvited to play. On this occasion, the gallery is organizing a chesstournament by registration in partnership with Blitz Society onSaturday, February 14.

I’m someone who’s “classic.”

I like striped shirts, 19th-century literature, lovemaking in placesdesigned for it (a bed, or perhaps a sofa bed on a whim), and openingwith e4 in chess. In short, very classic.

Yet despite this classic opening, everything unravels. The opponent’sresponse generates twenty countermoves, each branching intothousands of possible positions, and so on, until we reach the Shannonnumber. No need to spell it out; let’s simply call it vertigo.

For me, this is where chess reveals all its ambivalence: the infinitecontained within a human-sized board. An XXL world at your fingertips.And there, my classic side surrenders, as each game unfolds like anunpredictable story.

Why have artists—Duchamp above all—been so drawn to chess, evento the point of seeking total refuge in it? Is it the game’s infinite depth,which turns it into a quasi-mystical quest (Michel Journiac)? Or itsgraphic allure, where each piece asserts its form and the imaginaryworlds we project onto it (Hildebrandt)? Or perhaps its social dimension(Amélie Bigard), since playing alone risks madness (as Zweig vividlyillustrates).

Here, then, are works that delve into this game-vortex.

Some do so directly, others obliquely or even tangentially—but in each Idetect a knowing nod.

The selection spans a century, offering a glimpse of modern art historythrough the lens of chess.

A group show that, for once, is anything but classic. Proof thatappearances can be deceiving...

R. Jonathan Lambert

Courtesy Perrotin.