ART CITIES:Paris-Exhibitions At Palais De Tokyo
Palais de Tokyo occupies a monumental building which was built in 1937 for the Paris International Exhibition dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life. The west wing of the palace houses one of the largest centres for creation and contemporary art in Europe. Entirely renovated in April 2012 by the architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vasall, the site offers visitors exhibitions, meetings, screenings, concerts and performances in a 22,000 m² space spread across 4 floors. The east wing of the Palais de Tokyo houses the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Palais De Tokyo Archive
Palais de Tokyo continues its exploration of art through various fields of knowledge and cross-disciplinary forms and practices. Five exhibitions are on presentation at Palais de Tokyo. At the crossroads of art, cinema and theater, the group exhibition “Dioramas” is the first large survey to recontextualize the diorama with a renewed approach to the history of spectactorship, including the influence of science and technology, popular culture, fun fairs and exhibitions. The exhibition goes beyond the historical narrative of the diorama and its influence on major artists of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Inviting the audience to step into the hidden mechanisms of a diorama, the exhibition dismantles its strategies of illusionism and allows the viewer to build a critical approach on the power of representation. Offering an outstanding selection of important works spanning several Centuries, the exhibition also points at timely issues such as ecological awareness and the visual legacy of colonialism. For “Stall(s) of Fame”, his first solo show in France, Gareth Nyandoro has produced an installation inspired from the urban space and ephemeral sales sites, such as the stands of the Parisian booksellers on the banks of the Seine. Inhabited by famous African figures of sport, society and politics, his paper pieces can be deployed in space to become sculptures. Thanks to a recollection that a former drawing teacher, told her one day, Hayoun Kwon is offering us access to the imaginary world of a mysterious woman, nicknamed “The Bird Lady”. Several of Hayoun Kwon’s pieces are linked to geopolitical questions of borders and territoriality. For example, the projects “Model Village” (2014) or “489 Years” (2015), which she conceived as allusions to the no man’s land that separates the two Koreas, and “Lack of Evidence” (2011), a short film presenting the tale of a young asylum seeker from Nigeria confronted with the French administration. By regularly mixing in her work a documentary approach with the techniques of animated movies and new technologies, Hayoun Kwon interweaves facts and fiction, reality and virtuality, to question the complexity of the real. Taloi Havini’s artistic and curatorial practice centers on the deconstruction of the politics of location, and the transmission of Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Her work responds to the history and culture of Bougainville, where she was born, and acknowledges her people’s deep connection to land, despite years of conflict and civil war. In her research for “Habitat”, Taloi Havini engages with living cultural practitioners and Oceanian material collections and archives. She often responds to these experiences and sites of investigation with experimental ceramic installations, print, photographic and video works in solo and collaborative works. She is actively involved in cultural heritage projects, exhibitions, research and community development in Melanesia and Australia. The group exhibition “The Dream of Forms”, presented for the 20th anniversary of Le Fresnoy school, has been conceived as an imaginary landscape, a monstrous garden with perishable forms growing in it, as well as germinating surfaces, protuberant organisms and flat figures. The artists and researchers who have been brought together in the exhibition testify to their encounter with the new possibilities of representation, derived from recent scientific and technological discoveries, which shake up our way of seeing and showing. By renewing in this way the field of the perceptible –with nanotechnologies, synthetic images, 3D scans, stereolithography etc.– these new visualisations hint at as yet unknown geometries.
Info: Curators: “Dioramas”: Claire Garnier, Laurent Le Bon, Florence Ostende, “Stall(s) of Fame”: Adélaïde Blanc, “The Bird Lady”: Katell Jaffrès, “The Dream of Forms”: Alain Fleischer, Claire Moulène, Palais de Tokyo, 13 Avenue du Président Wilson, Paris, Duration: 14/6-10/9/17, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun: 12:00-24:00, www.palaisdetokyo.com
