Catalogue d'exposition Yoko Ono

Exhibition catalogue Yoko Ono. Lumière de L’aube, presented at the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (9 march - 10 july 2016).

It was during the “soirées” at 112 Chambers Street that Yoko presented her first “Instruction Paintings”: Smoke Paintings, Painting To Be Stepped On, Shadow Piece, and Pea Piece, Add Color Painting. She wrote about these in 1966: “Instruction Painting separates painting into two different functions : the instructions and the realization. The work becomes a reality only when others realize the work. Instructions can be realized by different people in many different ways. This allows infinite transformation of the work that the artist himself cannot foresee, and brings the concept of ‘time’ into painting”. It is clear from this that Yoko Ono considers that her œuvre is expressly designed to be definitively uncompleted, to be capable of being performed by anyone and of being reworked over time, and re-performed on any occasion. And it follows that, since they can be performed anywhere and at any time.

For Lyon’s show, Yoko Ono has chosen the title Lumière de L’aube. It is generic, in so far as Lumière (Light) is one of the keywords of her œuvre. At the same time, it is rooted in the city’s history because it inevitably recalls that strange invention, which its creators, the Lumière Brothers, predicted would never catch on, namely, the cinema. And for such a young work, Yoko Ono’s, this title is a beautiful beginning, a very nice opening.

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