Floating fish balloons are a mainstay in Paris-based artist Philippe Parreno’s current work—unable to be bound to any medium, the artist explores the object in the relationship to the space of an exhibition. Utilizing scientific technology in groundbreaking ways, Parreno most recently gave performative authority to a yeast colony in his 2017 show, La levadura y el anfi trión (The Yeast and The Host) at Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Last year marked three international solo exhibitions for the artist—Natalie Hegert sits down with Parreno to talk about his two recent exhibitions in 2018, at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin and the Art Institute of Chicago, in the context of the inescapable impermanence of the ‘permanent’ object.
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Philippe Parreno was born in 1964 in Oran, Algeria. He graduated from École des Beaux-Arts de Grenoble in 1988 and in 1989 from Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. In 2016, Parreno presented the Hyundai Commission in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London. He was the first artist to take over the entire 237,000 square foot space at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris with his exhibition Anywhere, Anywhere Out of the World which opened in October 2013. Major exhibitions of Parreno’s work include: Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2017); Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2017); Fundaciao de Serralves, Porto (2017); HangarBicocca, Milan (2015), Park Avenue Armory, New York (2015), CAC Malaga (2014), The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture 0 , Moscow (2013); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2013); Fondation Beyeler (2012); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2012); The Serpentine Gallery, London (2010); Witte de With (2010); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2009); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009); Kunsthalle Zurich (2009); CCA Kitakyoshu, Japan (2006); Kunsthalle Zürich (2006); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2003); Musée D’Art Moderne de le Ville de Paris (2002), and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2001). Most recently, Parreno’s work was on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, where his exhibition Two Automatons for One Duet was on view from February 3–April 15, 2018. He lives and works in Paris.