spent christmas in france with friends at imprints but spent 2 days in lyon before and as ever when in a new space i checked out the visitor offering – some recommendations – a little out of town but set in its own grounds with a great car park! is the lyon museum of contemporary art http://www.mac-lyon.com/mac/ which had 2 fabulous shows - bruce nauman and trisha brown – a wonderful piece of programming enabling the reviewing of both bodies of work. also within the building was work that i only seem to see exhibited in regional galleries on the continent – work of huge scale in huge spaces which seem implausible – giant blocks of ice melting in the gallery, massive (20 m x 5m) colour field paintings and action installations the size of a building. tricky to find but worth it the Institute d'art contemporain http://www.i-art-c.org/ housed in an old school - it seeks to show work that challenges the notion of what art is a trek stuck way out within the suburbs but worth it for the work of Vincent Lamouroux who had rebuilt his space and Francois Curlet’s wallpaper based on rorschach blots. while not eating tete du veal or boudin noir with apples and mashed potato closer in town was the wonderful lyon museum of religious art http://www.fourviere.org/fr_FR/index.php which had a temporary exhibition of pieces from the Urals - an incredible collection of statues in polychrome wood but the standout ‘exhibit’ was the fourvier basilica – i was taken with the stone work on the outside. i also have to mention the quite bizarre museum of the miniature http://www.mimlyon.com/ which is as it says a museum of miniature stuff – the choice to recreate in miniature spaces not usually celebrated – stairwells, hotel corridors and the bottom of a swimming pool made it quite wondrous - there was a feeling that somebody had read Bachelard's The Poetics of Space or Perec's Species of Spaces and then there was the usual city images for the collection – covered shop fronts, interesting use of fabric in building work and then there was cheese.
