Philippe Parreno

Cahiers d’Art presents an exhibition of Philippe Parreno, an unchallenged original in the international art world. The presentation, in Cahiers d’Art’s space at 14, rue du Dragon, is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-editor of the Cahiers d’Art revue and a co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London. It includes more than thirty recent drawings by the artist as well as recent photographs from a performance conducted with a colony of Magellanic penguins on a beach in Patagonia. 

This new collaboration between the artist and the curator is part of a process that has united these two unique figures in the world of contemporary art for many years. The series presented here – CHZ, Fireflies, Marilyn: In preparation of a Biometric Portrait – all date from 2011 and 2012 and are recent projects for the artist, as is the practice of drawing itself.  Parreno compares drawing to writing. For him, the grammar is substituted with aspects of image, which together form an almost formal language, and the different series are conceived in the manner of a storyboard.  A second exhibition in Cahiers d’Arts’ gallery at 15 rue du Dragon combines a dozen master drawings selected by Parreno, including Francisco de Goya, Victor Hugo, Wassily Kandinsky, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Case, Liam Gillick , Matthew Barney, Koo Jeong-A and John Cage. 

Regarding his curated exhibition in 15 rue du Dragon, Philippe Parreno explains “These are the drawings I was thinking of while working on the CHZ series. For me, these are drawings where the memories of the drawings are truly linked to writing.”  Parreno creates two new silver gelatin prints mounted on aluminum in an edition of 10, with two artist’s proof for the exhibition at Cahiers d’Art.