Shards of fluorescent light stream onto the gallery floor, mirrored pillars trap colours in a spectral haze. Daniel Buren and Philippe Parreno's ‘Simultanément, travaux in situ et en mouvement’ is a show that leaves more to the imagination than most.
The exhibition is a fusion of forms and creative minds: individual works by each artist have been connected to form one installation with underlying themes of automation, uncertainty, and inconclusiveness. It investigates, as Parreno describes, ‘the way things appear and disappear, which is the definition of a ghost or indeed any form that manifests itself.’
Here, the new space becomes as much a part of the work as the art itself. The 600 sq m gallery on Paris’ rue du Pont de Lodi is Kamel Mennour’s fifth and marks its third collaboration with interior designer – and Wallpaper* Designer of the Year 2019 – Pierre Yovanovitch. ‘When I saw the new Kamel Mennour gallery site, it reminded me of a cloister with its row of windows and its succession of posts’, says Yovanovitch. ‘After doing some research about the location, we wanted to maintain the building’s original character while emphasising its volume.’
As well as a dialogue between the artists’ work, the site-specific installation is also in deep conversation with the space. Each window is covered in a vibrantly-coloured film, which obscures the view to the outside world and drenches the gallery with rhythmic, intoxicating fragments of pink, blue and yellow.
‘The space opens and closes to the rhythm of a form that is also trying to exist, to appear within a gaze, to manifest itself. A space undergoing the time of its own unveiling. A stochastic space, one given up to chance, made up of glimmers and events’, says Parreno. ‘Everything is breath and movement in this place that is never really a place since it is endlessly forming and deforming itself.’
INFORMATION
’Simultanément travaux in situ et en mouvement’, until 27 February 2021. kamelmennour.com
ADDRESS
Kamel Mennour
5 rue du Pont de Lodi
75006 Paris
-
Audi launches AUDI, a China-only sub-brand, with a handsome new EV conceptThe AUDI E previews a new range of China-specific electric vehicles from the German carmaker’s new local sub-brand
-
Inside Izza Marrakech: A new riad where art and bohemian luxury meetHonouring the late Bill Willis’ hedonistic style, Izza Marrakech fuses traditional Moroccan craftsmanship with the best of contemporary art
-
Clocking on: the bedside analogue timepieces that won’t alarm your aestheticWe track down the only tick-tocks that matter, nine traditional alarm clocks that tell the time with minimum fuss and maximum visual impact
-
Architecture, sculpture and materials: female Lithuanian artists are celebrated in NîmesThe Carré d'Art in Nîmes, France, spotlights the work of Aleksandra Kasuba and Marija Olšauskaitė, as part of a nationwide celebration of Lithuanian culture
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been doing this weekInvesting in quality knitwear, scouting a very special pair of earrings and dining with strangers are just some of the things keeping the Wallpaper* team occupied this week
-
Tom Wesselmann’s enduring influence on pop art goes under the spotlight in Paris‘Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &...’ is on view at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris until 24 February 2025
-
Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales film series comes to life for Art Basel ParisIn ‘Tales & Tellers’, interdisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga brings Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales film series for Art Basel Paris to life for the public programme
-
Art Basel returns to Paris: here is everything to see and doArt Basel Paris 2024 (18 - 20 October 2024) returns, opening at the newly renovated Grand Palais
-
Elmgreen & Dragset explore contemporary masculinity in ParisWe visit Elmgreen & Dragset at their Berlin studio ahead of new exhibition ‘L’Addition’ at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, a subversive take on the classical form
-
Don’t miss Henri Matisse and Ellsworth Kelly at Fondation Louis VuittonFondation Louis Vuitton present a series of works by Matisse and Kelly, celebrating the influence they had on the trajectory of contemporary art
-
‘Who has not dreamed of seeing what the eye cannot grasp?’: Rencontres d’Arles comes to the south of FranceLes Rencontres d’Arles 2024 presents over 40 exhibitions and nearly 200 artists, and includes the latest iteration of the BMW Art Makers programme
