Christophe Berdaguer & Marie Péjus

Ricard Foundation Prize presentation
in the Centre Pompidou

7ème continent

Since 2000, the Centre Pompidou has shown the winners of the Prix Fondation d'Entreprise Ricard, awarded each year to an outstanding representative of the younger generation of French artists.
The winner is chosen by a jury of art-collectors and friends of the art museums from among the artists selected for an exhibition at the Fondation by a curator of the Fondation's choice. The winning work is purchased by the Fondation and presented to the Musée National d'Art Moderne.

Since the mid-1990s, Christophe Berdaguer and Marie Péjus have developed an art intimately related to architecture, centred on environmental analysis, housing design and spatial planning.

7ème continent is a light installation consisting of a hemisphere of plexiglas illuminated by daylight-identical fluorescent tubes governed by an electronic control. The frontiers between the real and the imaginary dissolve in the blazing glow of this captivating sun, inviting meditation and reflection.

"At 3,500 lux and above, light brings an additional benefit: an almost complete halt to the production of melatonin, a natural soporific secreted by the pineal gland when we are in darkness. This advantageously substitutes for a strong coffee in facilitating the shift from the sleeping to the waking state." Christophe Berdaguer and Marie Péjus.
Christophe Berdaguer and Marie Péjus's 7ème continent now joins those of previous winners of the Prize, since 1999 - Didier Marcel, Natacha Lesueur, Tatiana Trouvé, Boris Achour, Matthieu Laurette, Mircea Cantor, Loris Gréaud and Vincent Lamouroux - in the collection of Musée National d'Art Moderne.

Christophe Berdaguer and Marie Péjus, "7th Continent", 2001, half-sphere Plexiglas, fluorescent tubes and electrical cable, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Martine Aboucaya, Paris.

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