This exhibition has been especially put together for the MUNTREF venue at the Hotel de Inmigrantes by Marin Karmitz, who personally selected some 100 works from his own collection of 1500. These pieces ask questions of our way of being in this world, and resonate with the history of the building housing them, which received the thousands of immigrants arriving on Argentine soil in the early 1900s in search of a better life.
The collection, carefully assembled by Marin Karmitz over 30 years, is the last oeuvre by this Romanian-born Frenchman, who arrived in France at the age of 9 and is today known by film-lovers the world over for his movies, as well as for the MK2 film theatres which transformed Parisian districts.
He began his career as a director, and it is in this vein that he imagined the way in which the works were to be presented. As with all collections, it may also be seen as a form of self-representation of the collector, for each work offers a glimpse into one of his interests.
At the exhibition, many histories cross paths, and these reveal the choices taken by the collector: the artists whose works moved him such as Lewis Hine or Roman Vishniac, the patient construction of a series of works by a single artist, whether a photographer such as Christer Strömholm or an artist such as Ceija Stojka, and the ongoing dialogue he has established with some of them, as is the case with Annette Messager, with whom he has forged a great friendship.
The works chosen also evoke an era (the 20th century and its tragedies), through its places, and the media (photography, drawing, painting, video and several large-scale installations, such as those by Christian Boltanski or Abbas Kiarostami) among which predominates a black and white color scheme.
Uniquely personal, committed and demanding, this collection, which is being shown for the first time in Latin America, provides a significant and vital insight into recent history through works of exceptional resonance.
This project is sponsored by the Embassy of France and the Institut français d'Argentine.
