The exhibition Temps de Mars takes its title from a 1907 work by Charles L’Eplattenier. The landscape depicts the summits of the Jura mountains, the snow beginning to melt beneath a blustery sky, making it the ideal starting point for an exploration of the links between the visual arts and climate change. The dual meanings in the title connect springtime with the planet Mars, Earth’s rocky twin where all life seems to be absent for the time being; they also invite us to cast our minds to other timescales – long spans, the long distant past, long into the future.

The exhibition seeks to spark a dialogue between a set of historical works from the museum’s collection and a corpus of contemporary art, exploring the alien development of mountain landscapes, focusing particularly on the Jura and its flora and fauna. Exploring landscape painting sheds light on the development of natural scenes captured in art and the inhabitability of the spaces that artists have historically sought to portray. Here, art bears witness to the weather patterns and landscapes of the past. Art is also a speculative tool enabling us to study the coming transformations of familiar territories.

With works by Caroline Bachmann, Rémy Bender, Cindy Coutant, Bertrand Dezoteux, Andreas Dobler, Florent Dubois, Mathis Gasser, Thomas Huber, Pauline Julier, Kunsthaus Neverländ, Lang/Baumann, Lou Masduraud, Nelly Monnier, Adrian Morris, Yoan Mudry, Denis Savary, Ambroise Tièche, Nicolas Ponce, Jean-Xavier Renaud, René Zäch as well as historical works from the museum collection.

The accompanying texte of the exhibition, ∞ – 02024 – ∞, written by Jill Gasaparina, is available here.