BUDAPEST.- The Ludwig Museum—Museum of Contemporary Art offers a glimpse into the recent past of the contemporary French art scene through the lens of the winners and nominees of the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize, celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2025.
The Centre Pompidou in Paris, a prominent French contemporary art institution, has been a partner of the privately launched prize by ADIAF since its inception in 2000. The prize plays a major role in promoting contemporary art in France and in fostering the international careers of the artists nominated. Over the years, the national art prize founded by ADIAF has grown into a highly regarded and recognised initiative in the international professional discourse. The jury selects artists who were born in France or live in France and who consider the French scene a place of artistic fulfilment. Recent years have only reinforced the idea behind the concept of the prize, which aims to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the French scene, reflecting its social and cultural diversity, by selecting the most innovative artists.
The selection presented by the Ludwig Museum includes eighteen artists, all prominent figures on the international art scene. The exhibition’s title, A Field Well-Found, references Duchamp’s concept of the “found object” (ready-made) while alluding to the research-driven creative processes of the participating artists. Central to the exhibition is the idea of “fieldwork”—whether exploring interior or physical spaces. Artists explore the subject of their research with an almost anthropological fieldwork-like depth, blending experimental methods that lead their work into unexpected territories, found fields. Here, the artist functions as researcher, creator, and analyst, and as a narrator, makes their own person and experience an integral part of the process. Finally, the title refers also to the museum as a field.
The works amplify underrepresented voices, expose hidden environmental processes, reconstruct shared memories, and challenge biased historical narratives. An important aspect of the selection process was to highlight creative mechanisms and positions in which art actively shapes the process of engagement and to prioritize creative approaches where art serves as a platform for engagement, reinterpretation, and participation. A key focus was the reparative process—initiatives that explore the present while constructing a shared vision of the future. The exhibition presents works using different media, drawing a kind of temporal line between the early years of the Marcel Duchamp Prize and the present. Some of the works were featured in the exhibition accompanying the Prize nomination, while others are iconic within the artist’s oeuvre. Additionally, the show presents several seminal pieces from the contemporary French art scene (Tatiana Trouvé, Mohamed Bourouissa). Many artists have represented France or another country at the Venice Biennale (Anri Sala, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Julien Creuzet, Kapwani Kiwanga, Latifa Echakhch, Zineb Sedira), but there will also be works originally shown at the Biennale (Camille Henrot). In addition to several renowned French contemporary galleries, there will be works from institutions such as MAC VAL and Lafayette Anticipations.
The exhibition marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the prize, while the museum also offers one of the most comprehensive selections of French contemporary art in Hungary in recent times. In this way, its spaces become a true found field for these French practices, whose questions are relevant in many aspects within the Hungarian context.
Curators: Jan Elantkowski, Borbála Kálmán
Exhibiting artists: Kader Attia, Maja Bajevic, Bertille Bak, Mohamed Bourouissa, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Mircea Cantor, Julian Charrière, Julien Creuzet, Latifa Echakhch, Cyprien Gaillard, Noémie Goudal, Camille Henrot, Thomas Hirschhorn, Bouchra Khalili, Kapwani Kiwanga, Anri Sala, Zineb Sedira, Tatiana Trouvé.
