Moteur Imaginaire

Moteur Imaginaire, the inaugural exhibition at Le Large, the new contemporary art space on Paris's Île Seguin, is curated by Cecilia Alemani, the internationally renowned Italian curator based in New York. Presented in partnership with the Fonds Renault pour l'Art et la Culture, the show draws on the symbolic legacy of the former Renault car factory, a site that for decades kept time with French industry, tracing the relationship between humanity and the machines it creates, with a particular focus on the automobile as a symbol of innovation, progress and freedom, and as a catalyst for technological, environmental, urban and social change.

The exhibition brings together masterpieces from the Renault collection, born of pioneering collaborations between the manufacturer and artists since the 1960s, alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists. It unfolds across five chapters: Usine de mes pensées, revisiting the Recherche, Art et Industrie programme that gave artists access to the factory floor; Forces motrices, on the car and the assembly line as metaphors for twentieth-century social systems; Corps sociaux, on working-class and immigrant labour histories within industrial life; Objets du désir, on the car as an extension of the body and object of desire; and La machine humaine, on the shifting boundary between human and machine in an increasingly automated future.

Artists include Monira Al Qadiri, Leila Alaoui, Judy Chicago, Jean Dubuffet, Niki de Saint Phalle, Ed Ruscha, Jean Tinguely, Victor Vasarely, among many others.