Since it was set up in 1984, the Cartier Foundation has formed a collection of contemporary art with the aim of supporting young artists and encouraging their work. lts large collection shows the eclecticism and diversity of the art of our times, with respect to both styles and techniques, through a series of representative works from 1960 to the present day.

The exhibition at the Joan Miro Foundation will contain works produced between 1964 and 1997 by 22 artists working in the fields of painting, sculpture, photography, images and installations.

Rather than trying to present a historical sequence, the exhibition will show the aesthetic, symbolic and occasionally emotional links between the vanous items.

Works such as those by Marc Couturier, Vija Celmins, Tatsuo Miyajima and Bill Viola explore, for example, an intimate territory that prepares us for a more contemplative attitude. Others such as the photographs by Xavier Veilhan and Lee Friedlander, or the video by Didier Courbot, reveal a personal world of images that appear as surreal still-lifes.

In contrast, the works of Judith Bartolani, Claude Caillol and Bodys Isek Kingelez follow other lines of thinking and show different links: the appropriation of reality and the transformation of materials and objects, resulting in a surprising interpretation of the outside world.

The subject of personal experience as an interpretation of a fiction forms the starting point for other items in the exhibition: Nan Goldin, for instance, whose intense photographic works are like a private diary, or Pierrick Sorin, whose art is based on personal statements.

In this selection painting plays an important. independent role. On the one hand we have Sam Francis, Simon Hanta and Joan Mitchell, who create their own spaces solely by the use of colour; and on the other hand, younger artists such as Loie Le Groumellec or Carole Benzaken, who explore new territories and exhibit their pictorial experiments.