I’ve written about Palais de Tokyo a few times on this site, so it’s no surprise that it is one of my favorite museums in Paris. The museum is France’s largest exhibition space for contemporary art. I visited the institution to see the exhibition: Futur, ancien, fugitif: une scène française. Here were the highlights:

About the Exhibition

This exhibition [English translation: Future, Former, Fugitive: A French Scene] can be succinctly described as a survey of contemporary art-making in France. I almost want to compare it to the Whitney Biennial (I actually visited the museum with a former Whitney Museum coworker, so we couldn’t help but make comparisons). All of the artists featured were born, living, and/or somehow culturally linked to France.

One interesting theme: the show explicitly argues against tabula rasa—the idea that we are born without mental content and everything we know comes from experience or perception. Rather the exhibition aims to demonstrate how contemporary artists—through all their diverse oeuvres—innately redefine and evolve an expanding scene.

The definition of contemporary is another theme of the show. Artists featured are born between the 1930s and the 1990s, so “contemporary” becomes relational. What this exhibition does is bridge all these artists to attempt a more tangible permanence of the present.

Some of my favorite pieces included a massive clay soil installation by Maurice Blaussyld, neon paintings by Nina Childress that amazingly resembled videos in a museum black box, Audio/video/installation pieces by deaf artist Kengné Téguia, and contorted mythology-inspired sculptures by Nils Alix-Tabeling.

I think the conclusion of the show is that there is not one single French scene, but rather a community of artists from many different backgrounds and perspectives who contribute to the current discourse of contemporary art in France. Putting these works in a shared space emphasizes the complexity and diversity of French art, but also unity through a mission to influence coming generations.

Art featured in thumbnail by Carlotta Bailly-Borg.