Considered one of the most significant contemporary artists working at the intersection between art and film, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) presents the first Australian solo exhibition of internationally acclaimed French artist and filmmaker, Philippe Parreno from 6 December 2016.
Fresh from opening his triumphant exhibition Anywhen, the prestigious annual Hyundai Commission at London’s premiere contemporary art gallery, Tate Modern, the artist will be in Australia to open Philippe Parreno: Thenabouts at Australia’s only museum devoted to the moving image.
Introducing Parreno’s innovative and experimental practice to Australian audiences and occupying ACMI’s subterranean gallery, this exhibition will be the first-ever retrospective of Parreno’s filmic works. Orchestrated as an evolving cinematic experience within the gallery, the exhibition will weave the films together with lighting, sound and sculptural elements. Through performance and programming, the exhibition invites visitors to enter a world between reality and fiction, in which every visitor’s viewing experience will be unique.
For nearly three decades Parreno has been producing films and exhibitions that subvert audience expectations and seek to redefine the exhibition experience. He has become known for creating exhibitions that are played according to a score, working with a script that serves to structure a sequence of events – choreographing a mise-en-scene through which to explore the nature of images, duration, memory, and the passage of time. This exhibition will enfold visitors within a composition of image and sound in which time is not chronological, and a moment becomes eternity.
“ACMI is thrilled to be bringing the first major exhibition of Philippe Parreno’s work to Australia. He is one of the most exciting artists in the world to be working with the moving image.” said ACMI CEO and Director, Katrina Sedgwick.
“His exhibition at the Tate Turbine Hall has been receiving rapturous reviews, and it’s wonderful to have him here in Melbourne. Over summer Philippe Parreno: Thenabouts will introduce our audiences to this wonderful artist’s work, and challenge their ideas of what an exhibition could and should be.”
In recent years, Parreno has risen to a new level of prominence. His largest US show to date, H {N)YP N(Y} OSIS, premiered on a dramatic scale at New York’s expansive Park Avenue Armory in 2015 to critical acclaim. This year he was the recipient of the prestigious Hyundai Commission, a series of site-specific installations by contemporary artists in Tate Modern’s iconic Turbine Hall, showing concurrent to the ACMI exhibition, from 4 October through to 2 April 2017.
Alongside the exhibition, ACMI will present a series of public events and film screenings. Parreno’s acclaimed documentary Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006) – which he co-directed with artist Douglas Gordon, will screen as part of the program accompanying the exhibition.
The exquisite filmic portrait of legendary French midfielder, Zinedine Zidane – which premiered out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is a meditation on the mediated nature of reality that follows the soccer player throughout an entire Real Madrid vs Villarreal match using 17 cameras.
Philippe Parreno graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Grenoble (1988), and the Institute des Hautes Etudes en Arts Plastique at the Palais de Tokyo (1989). He has held major exhibitions at Tate Modern, London, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2015-16), The Park Avenue Armory, New York (2015), The Palais de Tokyo, Paris, (2013/14), Barbican Art Gallery, London (2013), The Serpentine Gallery, London (2010), and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2009).
Parreno is represented by Air de Paris, Paris, Pilar Corrias, London, Barbara Gladstone New York and Brussels, Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin, and 1301 PE, Los Angeles. Parreno’s work is also currently on display at the Walker Art Centre. Thenabouts was conceived alongside Parreno’s triumphant new commission for the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, Anywhen.
Philippe Parreno: Thenabouts
Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, Melbourne
Exhibition: 6 December 2016 – 13 March 2017
Free admission
For more information, visit: www.acmi.net.au for details.
Image: Philippe Parreno, The Crowd, 2015 (film still) © Philippe Parreno, Courtesy Pilar Corrias, Barbara Gladstone, Esther Schipper