Philippe Parreno is one of the most influential artists of his generation. He rose to prominence in the 1990’s by radically redefining what it means to ‘experience’ art by turning the dynamics of an exhibition into a situational process. He has transformed museum and exhibition spaces around the world in a series of blockbuster shows. His world has the ‘immersive, compellingly creepy feel of a good dystopian science-fiction movie’ (New York Times).
The artist is best known for his feature length film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, which he made with Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. The two directors trained 17 cameras on legendary French midfielder, Zinedine Zidane, widely regarded as the greatest footballer of all time, throughout his farewell match for Real Madrid against Villarreal in front of 80,000 fans at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. Ronaldo and David Beckham make cameo appearances and Scottish post-rock band Mogwai created the now iconic soundtrack for the film. The film premiered out of competition in 2006 at the Cannes Film Festival, and in its first week of release it sold 49,686 tickets across France. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it ‘a hypnotic experience to which you must abandon yourself’ in his 4 star review and the NY Times’s Manohla Dargis described it as ‘a pleasure the movies have been cultivating since Muybridge’s 19th-century locomotion studies’. The film went on to win the New Vision Award (2006) and was also nominated for a César Award (2007).
Parreno worked with Iranian-French cinematographer Darius Khondji on Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait and their collaboration has continued throughout his artistic career. In 2009 they worked together on June 8, 1968, a re-enactment of the scenes of people who lined the tracks to pay their respects as the train that transported Robert Kennedy’s body from New York to Washington for burial, ‘creating moments of indelible beauty and poignancy’ (2009, New York Times).
The pair famously collaborated on Parreno’s film Marilyn, where the artist conjured up the presence of the dead actress Marilyn Monroe, recreating the suite at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, where the actress stayed in the 1950s. The film debuted at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in June 2012. Both June 8, 1968 and Marilyn continue to be presented in galleries and museums throughout the world to this day.
In 2007 Parreno co-curated the critically acclaimed Il Tempo del Postino, a time-based theatre performance, with Serpentine Gallery artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist. Premiering at the Manchester International Film Festival, the duo invited fifteen of the world’s most important artists including Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney, Carsten Holler, Olafur Eliasson and Tacita Dean to perform a work of no longer than fifteen minutes each. Il Tempo del Postino has since been recognised as the world’s first ‘visual arts opera’.
Over the course of his artistic career Parreno has received countless honours and awards.
Parreno has been honoured at the Locarno Film Festival multiple times over the years for his outstanding contribution to film. In 2014 the artist was appointed as an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. 2015 saw the artist honoured by the Sculpture Center in New York, where then chief curator Mary Ceruti praised the artist’s collaborative nature. In 2019, Parreno was invited to participate in the 48th International Film Festival in Rotterdam (IFFR) where he presented the film work No More Reality Whereabouts (2019).
In 2021, LUMA Arles Foundation will open a permanent gallery designed by Frank Gehry, dedicated to the work of Parreno. The artist’s works are held in some of the most important art foundations in the world, including the Louis Vuitton Foundation and the Pinault Collection.
In 2013, Parreno became the first artist in history to be given creative carte de blanche of the entire 22,000 square metre gallery space at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Here, Parreno showcased his monumental exhibition Anywhere, Anywhere Out of the World. In 2016 Parreno unveiled Anywhen at Tate Modern in London, an immersive experience that challenged viewers perception of time and space to international acclaim.
In 2019 Parreno was commissioned by the MoMA in New York to create a long-term, site-specific artwork to mark the museum’s extended campus opening. Parreno’s installation Echo, remained in the museum’s Samuel and Ronnie Heymann lobby until 2021. The installation is a multi-part automaton which moves in response to live data culled from its surroundings. Parreno collaborated with Venezuelan record producer Arca to produce two years’ worth of soundtrack as well as coders to programme the installation to function continuously over the two-year programme of the commission.
Parreno’s collaborations extend into the fashion world in collaboration with Phoebe Philo’s Céline Fall 2017 show, where the artist created, according to Business of Fashion’s Tim Blanks ‘the sound, the set and the SFX. The sound was a drone that steadily built from a hum to a jet engine roar, before splintering into musical melancholia. And the SFX? The audience revolved while the models walked around and around, defining the space. Very Parreno’.
The artist and his work have been the subject of documentaries and films internationally and he is regularly featured in global news, art and fashion publications including the covers of Paris Match, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Evening Standard, ArtReview, and Wallpaper* magazine. Born in Algeria in 1964, Parreno was raised in Grenoble and has lived and worked in Paris since the early 1990s. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Grenoble from 1983 until 1988 and at the Institut des Hautes Etudes en arts plastiques at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris from 1988 until 1989. Based in Paris, France, Parreno has exhibited and published internationally. Parreno is represented by Pilar Corrias Gallery, London, Air de Paris, Paris, Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin, Barbara Gladstone, New York, and 1301PE, Los Angeles. Parreno has presented solo exhibitions at Watari-Um, Tokyo (2019); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2018); Jumex, Mexico City (2017); The Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2017); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2017); ACMI, Melbourne (2016/17); HangarBicocca, Milan (2015/2016), Park Avenue Armory, New York (2015); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014/2013); CAC Malaga (2014); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2013); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel (2012); Serpentine Gallery, London (2010-2011); Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York (2009–2010); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2009–2010); Kunsthalle Zürich (2009) and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2009). Parreno’s work is represented in numerous major museum collections, including Tate, London; MoMA, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kanazawa Museum of the 21st Century, Japan; Musée d’Art Modern de la Ville de Paris, Paris; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. His work was also presented at the Venice Biennale (1993, 1995, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2015, and 2017), Venice Biennale of Architecture (2014), Lyon Biennale (1997, 2003, and 2005), and Istanbul Biennial (2001).
