'Inside' at Palais de Tokyo

This immense odyssey, both physical and psychological, invites us to walk through two floors of the Palais de Tokyo that have been transformed by artists in such a way that, from one installation to the next, we remain constantly immersed in the works, which lead us within ourselves – from our skin to our most intimate thoughts.

With Jean-Michel ALBEROLA, Dove ALLOUCHE, Yuri ANCARANI, Sookoon ANG, Christophe BERDAGUER & Marie PEJUS, Christian BOLTANSKI, Peter BUGGENHOUT, Marc COUTURIER, Nathalie DJURBERG & Hans BERG, dran, Marcius GALAN, Ryan GANDER, Ion GRIGORESCU, HU Xiaoyuan, Eva JOSPIN, Jesper JUST, Mikhail KARIKIS & Uriel ORLOW, Mark MANDERS, Bruce NAUMAN, Mike NELSON, NUMEN/FOR USE, Abraham POINCHEVAL Araya RASDJARMREARNSOOK, Reynold REYNOLDS & Patrick JOLLEY, Ataru SATO, Stéphane THIDET, TUNGA, Andra URSUTA, Andro WEKUA, Valia FETISOV, Artur ZMIJEWSKI.

Among the artists and works exhibited we can find the following.

Andro Wekua

Placed at the intersection of history, memory and fantasy, the work of Andro Wekua (born in 1977, lives and works in Berlin) gives rise to a feeling of disquieting eeriness. He presents here a condensed version of his mnemonic investigations with a sculpture, a film and an environment. The three come together in order to create a feeling of claustrophobia, even dread: Untitled (2011), a wax mannequin with its head encapsulated in a house echoes a short film bordering on science fiction, entitled Never Sleep With a Strawberry in Your Mouth II (2010-2012). In both works someone or something takes possession of your mind. Originally from Georgia in the former USSR—a country he was forced to flee during childhood—Andro Wekua has kept in his work traces of this ‘elsewhere’. His wax figures built to human scale seem to protect themselves from the outside world by the richness of their most intimate thoughts while his paintings refer to the 20th-century avant-garde and his miniature models are memories of the communist architecture of his past.

Stéphane Thidet

Le Refuge by Stéphane Thidet (born in 1974, lives and works in Paris) is a wooden cabin, equipped with a few pieces of furniture, similar to those in which mountaineers and hikers might spend the night in the mountains. Yet who would dream of entering this cabin as it’s raining inside? Watching the rainfall through the window doesn’t produce a feeling of pleasure or security. Rather, the viewer is faced here with a reversal of outside and inside, of a refuge turned into a hostile place. The refuge is therefore to be found outside, perhaps within us. Stéphane Thidet manipulates objects and forms, proposing situations through his work. He subverts and disturbs what is familiar, forcing each of us to look at and interrogate reality. The artist knowingly turns our daily experiences and knowledge on their heads in order to interact with our imaginations.

Eva Jospin

In order to enter the exhibition 'Inside', the visitor must first dare to step into a mysterious forest created by Eva Jospin (born in 1975, lives and works in Paris). The forest – an incarnation of nature in the wild – is above all the setting in traditional storytelling of tests of courage, and can be a gloomy or initiatory place. The forest is also where one encounters oneself. This walk through the forest initiates the visit to 'Inside', which is also an inner journey. Eva Jospin works with cardboard to create volume and perspective, creating evocative bas-reliefs. A painstaking process of cutting, assemblage and overlay coupled with an element of violence in her gestures enable her to carve out dense yet delicate, mysterious and soothing forests. The artist realizes works that manage to be both frontal and immersive, the perfect media for mental projection via a familiar material devoid of any intrinsic aesthetic quality.

Curators: Jean de Loisy, Daria de Beauvais, Katell Jaffrès.

When.- 20/10/2014 - 11/01/2015.
Where.- Palais de Tokyo. 13, avenue du Président Wilson, 75 116 Paris, France.