Information

Date: 2019.3.1 (Fri.) 18:30 – 20:30
Location: Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing
To reserve a seat, please send email to info@kwmartcenter

The Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing presents Marilyn, an exhibition dedicated to French artist Philippe Parreno, and related conversations. Philippe Parreno’s reputation has been built on the diversity of his practice which spans a vast range of media including film, sculpture, drawing and performance. Through his multidisciplinary practice, Parreno has created unexpected artworks that question the boundaries between reality and fiction, often blurring the distinction between the two. The artist invites the viewer to radically re-evaluate the nature of reality, memory, and the passage of time, elaborating universes where the aesthetics of social exchanges and situations are prioritized over the creation of art objects.

Since the 1990s, one constant and underlying thread in Parreno’s oeuvre is his interestin the exhibition as a medium, placing its construction at the heart of his process. Thus preferring projects to objects, Parreno began examining unique approaches to narration and representation throughout his works, conceiving his exhibitions as a scripted space where a series of events unfold. He seeks to transform the exhibition visit into a singular experience that plays with spatial and temporal boundaries and the sensory experience of the visitor. From the 2000s onwards, ghosts, ventriloquists and robots began appearing more in Parreno’s films, posing the question of the origins of storytelling, whilst interrogating the passage of time and blurring reality and fiction. These importantthemes continue through Parreno’s later works, including Marilyn (2012), a film recreating Marilyn Monroe’s life in a phantasmagorical séance. For Parreno, the exhibition is a total work of art that offers an ongoing interdependent series of open possibilities.
This brand new show invites you to experience emblematic works from the Collection by Philippe Parreno in various media, including, alongside the eponymous video installation Marilyn: In Preparation of Marilyn: “The Quasi Living” (2013), Untitled (2010), and Untitled (2012). Comprising of drawings, sculpture and film, these works typify Parreno’s multidisciplinary practice through which he continues his quest to find an ultimate form of communication capable of transcending language.

About the artist

French artist Philippe Parreno was born in 1964 in Oran, Algeria. His oeuvre approaches the exhibition as a medium, and is constantly questioning and reinventing its format through film, sculpture, performance, drawing and text. He has works represented in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Kanazawa Museum of the 21st Century, Japan; MoMA, New York, USA; Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Tate Modern, London, UK; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA. Recently, Parreno has presented solo exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2014-2013); Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, Russia (2013); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland (2012); Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2010-2011); Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, USA (2009-2010); Irish Museum of Modem Art Dublin, Ireland (2009-2010); Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland (2009) and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (2009) His work has also appeared in the Venice Biennale, Italy (1993, 1995, 2003, 2007, and 2009), Lyon Biennale, France (1997, 2003, and 2005), and Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2001). In 2016, Philippe Parreno was awarded the prestigious Hyundai Commission al the Tate Modern Turbine Hall in London, UK, titled Anywhen. Philippe Parreno currently lives and works in Paris, France.

About the guest

Yuling Zhang is a graduate of Pekin University and Sorbonne Paris 1 and she received her doctor degree of European medieval art history. She is presently based in Beijing, as the artistic director of the KWM artcenter. She is also an art documentary producer and script writer and visiting professor of the China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou.

About the Collaborator

Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing
Inaugurated in 2017, the Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing is located in the Central Business District of the Chinese capital. Its 800m² exhibition space is dedicated exclusively to contemporary art exhibitions.