Deadline

I could not miss the exhibition called "Deadline" at Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris.
From Martin Kippenberger to Joan Mitchell, Robert Mapplethorpe and others, the message is moving. The exhibition is presenting pieces they created after being diagnosed with terminal illnesses.

Starting with Kippenberger, in the first room, are the portraits for "Das Floss der Medusa". This is the boat he chose to cross from life to death. Poignant self-portraits with expressions of great suffering are lining up one side of the room while on the other side, the portraits are showing the back of the artist who already left us.

The exhibition also presents Absalon with one of his cell- like apartment, all white, small, like a cocoon.

Hans Artung is showing great energy and appears taken by a colorful frenzy to produce , like Wilhem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell.

Robert Mappelthorpe's room is chilling: a parade of black and white photographs including a skull. Presiding over these, a photograph of the artist's face and a hand holding a cane with a skull, floating on a black background. He is looking intensely at ...me. The other photographs are Greek statues from Apollo, Hermes and other young gods, glowing in their eternal beauty and helping us reflect on our own mortality.

Several works from Chen Zhen are presented, one of them is quite unnerving with sounds of women giving birth, sick people moaning, coughing, vomiting.These sounds are coming from a coffin made with two hospital beds wrapped with bandages , pieces of torn hospital gowns.
More artists can be found on the website.

This exhibition is of great quality and is opened till January the 10Th.