This catalogue for Philippe Parreno's first solo show in mainland China, at the Rockbund Art Museum, reveals the artworks presented in the exhibition.
The exhibition, "Synchronicity," is dedicated to
Xavier Douroux, director and co-founder of the art center
Le Consortium in Dijon, whose influence on Parreno's career cannot be overstated.
Over the past twenty years, Parreno has radically redefined the exhibition-visiting experience by exploring its possibilities as a medium in its own right. The exhibition has altered the building's current existence through an unexpected use of time, space, light, and sound to become a semi-automated puppet, a perpetual motion of events in which Parreno subverts the conventions of the gallery space. Parreno will guide visitors through a constantly evolving area by manipulating light, shadow, and duration. The catalogue testifies, with a rich collection of photos, the involvement of visitors in this interaction between the artist's work and the architectural structure of the museum.
The curator, Larys Frogier, states: "Parreno invites visitors to engage with contradictory notions of the physical, emotional, and conceptual. He blurs the distinction between reality and fiction to create an all-encompassing world of endless possibilities". Frogier has also contributed a poem, "Vision," in this volume, echoing Parrreno's artistic research.
Born 1964 in Oran, Algeria, Philippe Parreno lives and works in Paris. Since the 1990s, Philippe Parreno's reputation has been built on his work's originality and on the diversity and variety of his practice. He views the exhibition as a medium, an object in its own right, an experience whose every possibility he seeks to explore. Preferring projects to objects, Philippe Parreno examines different approaches to narration and representation through film, sculpture, performance, drawing and text.
