Pae White
March 26 - June 30, 2025 | Centre Pompidou, Paris
Jean Chatelus, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 82, was a Lyon-born historian and lecturer at the Sorbonne. Throughout his life, he amassed a unique collection, driven more by an impulse to accumulate than by a traditional collector’s approach. Comprising nearly 400 pieces—sculptures, installations, paintings, photographs, drawings, votive and vernacular objects—the collection explores themes of the body, death, and the fleeting nature of life.
Énormément Bizarre: The Jean Chatelus Collection, donated by the Antoine de Galbert Foundation reflects Chatelus’s evolving tastes: from an early fascination with Surrealism and repurposed objects, to a later focus on body art. It also reveals his keen interest in non-Western ethnographic artifacts, folk traditions, and the works of contemporary art’s outsiders and enfant terribles, including Pae White, Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelley, Christian Boltanski, Yayoi Kusama, Michel Journiac, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Filliou, Nam June Paik, Joana Vasconcelos, Andres Serrano, and Wim Delvoye.