Gagosian Collabs with Olympic Museum on Paris Exhibition

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Gagosian is partnering with Lausanne's Olympic Museum on an exhibition combining contemporary art and Olympics memorabilia.

The Art of the Olympics opens at Gagosian's two Paris spaces on 6 June and continues through 7 September.

The gallery at 9 rue de Castiglione features sporty artworks including Andreas Gursky's football game photograph Amsterdam, Arena I (2000) and Man Ray's photographic negative Jeux Nocturnes (c. 1970), which centres on a soccer ball.

Other works include Duane Hanson's polychrome bronze sculpture Bodybuilder (1989–90), Jonas Wood's oil on canvas painting of a golf course, Scholl Canyon (2005), and Christo's drawing for Running Fence (1974), a 39.4-kilometre-long stretch of nylon.

In a press release, Gagosian said the sculpture 'communicates a sense of shared exhilaration akin to a marathon', but it was originally conceived in 1972 as a curtain to block the view of the Berlin Wall.

The gallery at 4 rue de Ponthieu features posters from the Olympic Museum's collection, including David Hockney's lithograph of a diver entering the water for the Munich games in 1972, Robert Rauschenberg's 'Star in Motion', created for the 1984 games in Los Angeles, and Rachel Whiteread's colourful coffee-cup ring poster for the London games in 2012.

In addition to the posters, the exhibition will feature correspondence and other objects related to the Olympics, and specially commissioned graphics by artists including Michael Craig-Martin, Tracey Emin, and Nam June Paik.

A portion of proceeds from sales will be donated to the Olympic Refuge Foundation, which aims to support displaced young people worldwide through sport. —[O]

Main image: Robert Rauschenberg's poster for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, featuring 'Star in Motion' (1982). Offset-printed poster, 61.5 x 91 cm. Olympic Museum Collections, Lausanne, Switzerland. © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Adagp, Paris, 2024. Photo: © International Olympic Committee. All rights reserved. Courtesy Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland.