“Well, why don’t we just do something extraordinary?” — Philippe Parreno

“Well, why don’t we just do something extraordinary?” — Parreno once said — “It’s true I say that. I realise that I say that. I am not sure what it means. Let’s leave that question suspended. Words, words, words…”

Biography

Philippe Parreno was born in 1964 in Orano, Algeria. He currently lives and works in Paris. In 1988 the French artist graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Grenoble and in 1989 from Palais de Tokyo’s Institut des Hautes Etudes en arts plastiques in Paris.

In 2016 he was awarded by the Hyundai Commission for “ANYWHERE”, an exhibition installed in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Parreno’s works are included in many collections around the world such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Castello di Rivoli in Turin (Italy), the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the LACMA in Los Angeles and MoMA in New York.

Philippe Parreno usually works with different media including sculpture, drawing, film, and performance. Following his traditional practice, the artist invites the audience to re-evaluate their consideration of duration: our reality, memory and time perception should be questioned. Meanwhile, Parreno’s constant research for a contemporary form of a non-linguistic communication is what led him to analyze the boundaries between the real and the imagination.

When conceiving his exhibitions, Parreno creates a complete and coherent body which is seen as a total “object” rather than a collection of individual works. The space became the medium where to exhibit a series of events which completely involve the audience through sounds and images creating a sensory experience.

One of his well-known projects is called “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait”. The 2006 full-length film was co-directed with Douglas Gordon and focused on the French footballer Zinedine Zidane. The project showed a real-time duration of a football match following Zidane’s every move.

Emblematic Works

ANYWHEN

Philippe Parent’s ANYWHEN was hosted by The Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern between 2016–2017 and was curated by Andrea Lissoni. Here, the time and space traditional perception is challenged by the creation of an immersive experience. Anywhere was a site-specific exhibition studied to change thoughtout the day and evolving during the six-month hosting period at Tate. Moving and flying elements, light configurations and sound environments pushed the public into a sensitive choreography. It is a new parallel reality in which a special software, which is informed by micro-organisms, creates sequences of events.

‘The exhibition is a construction of situations or sequences in a non-linear narrative’ — the artist stated.

Parreno is used to create his projects in large spaces. So that, the Turbine Hall represents a perfect place to host his exhibition: an open space at the center of the museum, completely connected to the city itself.

Quasi-Objects

Quasi-Objects is a stunning interactive artwork presented during the collective exhibition “Accrochage” at Punta Della Dogana Museum, in Venice, Italy. With this project, Parreno shows the philosophical framework of ‘quasi-objects’: objects and their inhabited context are truly inseparable. The artwork and the place in which is exhibited could not be spared one from the other. All pieces truly became objects only when exposed, and changing their meanings and functions each time they are shown. The exhibition was perfectly fitting this characteristic: the whole structure is a “mise-en-scène” where different events took place. Objects’ movements were synchronized by a mathematical automaton’s algorithm.

Once inside the space, the visitor is completely involved by the staged choreography: the exhibition actually creates more space for “the other”. A place where audience’s emotion and sensitivity are considered as important as their active participation. “To look more carefully”, indeed, as the title of the Museum’s exhibition suggests.

‘This quasi-object is not an object, but it is one nevertheless since it is not a subject since it is in the world; it is also a quasi-subject, since it marks or designates a subject who, without it, would not be a subject…This quasi-object, when being passed, makes the collective, if it stops, it makes the individual.’

Hypothesis

The Hypothesis exhibition was held at Hangar Bicocca in 2015 and it was curated by Andrea Lissoni. The project represents Parreno’s first anthological exhibition in Italy and it was conceived as a choreography: a precise script created by the artist himself. Once again, sounds and lights represent absolute protagonists of the show which brings together Parreno’s most recent works with a series of key pieces. A peculiar practice for Parreno: each past work is restaged in a new one and each time, possibly, it brings new meanings. One out of them is the artist’s iconic Marquees (in which the artist experiments with light and the format of the traditional cinema marque) and a piano which sequenced a musical composition by Agoria, Thomas Bartlett, Nicolas Becker, Ranjana Leyendecker, Robert AA Lowe and Mirways.

Nowadays, technical innovations have completely changed the way in which we produce, distribute, conceive and see art. Thus, art consumption has become fast, easy and sometimes non-engaging too. In this “dangerous” context, Philippe Parent’s research aims at the redefinition of the exhibition format but, above all, at the materialization of the evanescent notion of time, thus, opposing to the “super-velocity” contemporary art consumption, as defined by the critic David Joselit. Parent’s innovative practice rehabilitate effectively the audience: from a passive viewer to an acute observer who uses his/her capabilities to completely be involved in the whole experience. This is possible just because Parreno feels to be inside a familiar space, at Hangar Bicocca. Thus, it permits him to “be more intimate or reflective.”

“Hypothesis” represents the third component of a Gesamtkunstwerk trilogy completed by “Anywhere, Anywhere, Out of the World” staged at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and and “H{N)Y P N(Y}OSIS” held at Park Avenue Armory in New York. Exploiting huge and undetermined architectures, such as these ones, Parent builds his own “fiction”.

“The show is called Hypothesis, so it’s an attempt to explain or understand. I don’t know what yet, precisely…”

Some Exhibitions

2017 “A Time Colored Space” at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art

2016 “Philippe Parreno: Thenabouts” at ACMI, in Melbourne

2015 “H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS: Philippe Parreno” at Park Avenue Armory, NY

2014 “TV channel” at CAC Málaga, in Málaga

2013 “Anywhere, Anywhere Out of the World” at Palais de Tokyo, in Paris