Camillle Henrot, Days Are Dogs (Installation View), via Art Observed

Camille Henrot works better on a grand scale.  The Golden Lion-winning French artist, whose enigmatic and playful sculptures, paintings and installations dwell on the phenomenology of life, and an often overwhelming range of lived experience, seems to draw additional strength from working with as much space as possible, perhaps best seen in her last show at Metro Pictures in New York, where a range of concepts and ideas allowed the viewer to move effortlessly through experiences of neurosis, guilt, pain and anger through to more primal emotions, and on through to a coy fusion of the two in the language of modernity.   (more…)

Mika Rottenberg, Bowls Balls Souls Holes (Bingo) (2014), via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

Currently on view at Palais de Tokyo for its annual summer exhibition, Argentinian-born, New York-based artist Mika Rottenberg presents a broad selection of works, bringing a series of her expansive installation and video works, alongside new commissions, to the Paris institution’s grounds.  Centered around the artist’s recent Venice Biennale commission, NoNoseKnows, the show runs across a broad variety of the artist’s work over the last decade, exploring themes of production, economy, and the body through her own uniquely madcap lens. (more…)

Korakrit Arunanondchai, Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3 (2015), all photos by D. Mookherjee for Art Observed

Painting with History in a room filled with people with Funny Names 3 is a monographic exhibition displayed at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, presented by Thai artist Korakrit Arunanondchai, and concluding a series of works started in 2011. The exhibition gathers performances, installations and videos that question the apprenticeship of a painter through the prism of an exchange between the artist and his alter ego Chantri, and his incarnation as a recurring fictional character, the Thai Denim Painter.  This exhibition finalizes the artwork initiated with the two previous pieces by dealing with Arunanondchai’s core theme; his identity, a structured representation of his artistic life, the social realities of Thailand and the phenomena of globalization, all mingled together here to form what he refers to as a “Memory palace.” (more…)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Aujourd’hui, le monde est mort [Lost Human Genetic Archive], Photo: André Morin via Domus

In “Aujourd’hui, le monde est mort [Lost Human Genetic Archive]” on display at Palais de Tokyo, Hiroshi Sugimoto peers through time and presents a world balanced between life and death. Known for his photographic collections Diorama (1976), in which he photographed animal displays in natural history museums, Theaters (1978), long-exposure photographs of old-style American theaters while movies play on the screens, and Seascapes (1980), long-exposure black-and-white photographs of the meeting of sea and sky, Sugimoto explores the passage of time, making it tangible through the era of his subjects and the long exposure times used. (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, Flamme Èternelle (Installation View), via Flamme Eternelle Website

“I am interested in the ‘too much’, doing too much, giving too much, putting too much of an effort into something. Wastefulness as a tool or a weapon’ says Thomas Hirschhorn about his practice. The Swiss-born artist’s new exhibition, Flame Èternelle in Palais de Tokyo in Paris is the indisputable proof of this effort of presenting the ‘too much’.

Thomas Hirschhorn, Flamme Èternelle (Installation View), via Palais de Tokyo (more…)

Philippe Parreno, “ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD” (Installation View) Courtesy Palais de Tokyo

Responding to a carte blanche invitation from Paris’s prestigious Palais de Tokyo, Algerian-born Philippe Parreno has transformed its gallery space with an exhibition meant to establish a dialogue between architecture and the concept of the show as a medium in and of itself.

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Conrad Shawcross, ADA (2013), Courtesy Palais de Tokyo

On view at Palais de Tokyo in Paris is a major exhibition, organized by 21 young curators from 13 different countries, who were in turn selected from a candidate pool of 500. Nouvelles Vagues occupies all of Palais de Tokyo’s exhibition space as well as around 30 galleries throughout Paris. (more…)

The inaugural Nouvelles Vagues exhibition in Paris this month will showcase the innovative and increasingly spectacular work of 53 international, freelance curators selected from a pool of 1,600. The state-funded Palais de Tokyo and 31 independent Parisian galleries are holding the event through to September 9th. Among the highly anticipated pavilions are Catalan artist Marti Anson’s house built in the Palais de Tokyo, curated by France’s Marie Griffay, and the exhibitions at Galerie 1900-2000 on the Left Bank, curated by French artist Laurent Grasso.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Ryan Gander, Imaginez l’Imaginaire, installation detail 2012, All images courtesy Palais de Tokyo

Ryan Gander‘s Esperluette, the first exhibition in the Palais de Tokyo‘s series “biboliothèque d’artiste,” explores and interprets the concept of the ampersand (&) as a symbol of the network of connections made by the human mind when solving a puzzle. Through a variety of images of everyday objects, sound installations, and books, Gander invites viewers to create their own stories based on the reactions and associations which occur in their own minds.

Ryan Gander, Imaginez l’Imaginaire, installation detail 2012

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Grand Palais, courtesy FIAC

FIAC, or the 39th International Contemporary Art Fair, will open tomorrow (Thursday) in Paris, with a VIP preview today, with 184 galleries exhibiting at the Grand Palais, and this year utilizing the restored Salon d’Honneur as well, which lies at the center of the structure. As in past years, galleries will exhibit sculpture at the Tuilieries Garden nearby. Approximately 65,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Tuilieries Garden courtesy FIAC (more…)

‪‬Palais de Tokyo opened its doors on Thursday after a €20m, 10-month renovation, offering an intentionally dusty 237,000 sq feet spread over four floors, the center’s president de Loisy saying, “Nothing is perfectly clean, nothing is perfectly painted on purpose. It is so important in art not to control everything. It’s all in favor of creativity.”

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