Oliver Beer Group show at the Centre Pompidou

Comprising nearly 400 pieces—sculptures, installations, paintings, photographs, drawings, votive and vernacular objects—the collection of Jean Chatelus, a Lyon-born historian and lecturer at the Sorbonne who passed away in 2021 at the age of 82, explores themes of the body, death, and the fleeting nature of life. Presented almost in its entirety, the collection reflects Chatelus’s evolving tastes: from an early fascination with Surrealism and repurposed objects, to a later focus on body art. It also reveals his keen interest in non-Western ethnographic artifacts, folk traditions, and the works of contemporary art’s outsiders and enfant terribles.