Old People's Home
13 life size sculptures and 13 dynamoelectric wheel chairs
Variable dimensions
Thirteen hyperrealist figures sat in wheelchairs cross each other's path and bump into each other without any form of interaction. What seems at first a grotesque caricature of an old people's gathering, all apathetic or asleep, turns out to be the exact representation of 13 contemporary heads of state.
As shown in this installation, the Chinese artist duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu have garnered a reputation as contemporary art's enfants terribles with their controversial artworks in which they show a marked taste for the macabre and the morbid, sometimes using human tissue or even live animals. Here, a parody of a session of the United Nations Security Council, they ruthlessly attack the inaction, or even what they judge to be the senility of world leaders.
Held by the Pinault Collection, Old People's Home was presented in the group show À Triple tour (“triple locked”) at the Paris Conciergerie, in 2013.
View of the exhibition “Le monde comme il va”, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, 2024.
© Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, Niney et Marca Architectes, agence Pierre-Antoine Gatier.
Photo: Nicolas Brasseur/Pinault Collection.
© Goshka Macuga/ADAGP, Paris, 2024.
© Sun Yuan & Peng Yu/ADAGP, Paris, 2024.
From left to right:
— Goshka MACUGA
Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not 1, 2012
Tapestry
520 × 1726 cm
Pinault Collection
— SUN Yuan & PENG Yu
Old People‘s Home, 2007
Life size sculptures, dynamoelectric wheelchairs
Variable dimensions
Pinault Collection
— Goshka MACUGA
Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not 2 (detail), 2012
Tapestry
324 × 1140 cm
Pinault Collection
