Installation Views

Works Exhibited

About

Folding-unfolding no longer simply means tension-release, contraction-dilation, but enveloping-developing, involution-evolution.
—Gilles Deleuze

When I am folding, I am objective and that allows me to lose myself.
—Simon Hantaï

Gagosian Paris is pleased to present PLIAGE / FOLD. The exhibition will include works by Tauba Auerbach, Davide Balula, Alain Biltereyst, Tom Burr, César, John Chamberlain, William Daniels, Simon Hantaï, Sheila Hicks, Olaf Holzapfel, Sol LeWitt, Piero Manzoni, Steven Parrino, Jack Pierson, Diogo Pimentão, Charlotte Posenenske, Robert Rauscherberg, Blake Rayne, Anselm Reyler, Dorothea Rockburne, Rudolf Stingel, Tatiana Trouvé, Daniel Turner, and Rachel Whiteread.

PLIAGE / FOLD brings together artists from different generations who have explored the act of folding as both concept and formal process. Folding as action, illusion, and symbol has appeared throughout contemporary art and literature, including Simon Hantaï’s literal process of folding the canvas, dousing it in oil paint, then unfolding it to reveal inadvertent yet lyrical patterns; Gilles Deleuze’s influential meditation The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1988), in which the world is interpreted as an infinity of surfaces twisting through time and space; and Tatiana Trouvé’s recent Refoldings sculptures cast from discarded and refolded packing materials.

For Robert Rauschenberg the act of folding produced Freeway Glut (1986), a muscular assemblage of manipulated industrial parts, while John Chamberlain worked lightly and in miniature with resin-coated crumpled paper. Some works involve aleatory processes that transcend artistic control, such as Hantaï’s Blanc (1974), or Davide Balula’s canvases that he immersed in soil or in rivers, allowing incidental organic residue to take hold.

Simon Hantaï: Azzurro

Simon Hantaï: Azzurro

Join curator Anne Baldassari as she discusses the exhibition Simon Hantaï: Azzurro, Gagosian, Rome, and the significance of blue in the artist’s practice. The show forms part of a triptych with Gagosian’s two previous Hantaï exhibitions, LES NOIRS DU BLANC, LES BLANCS DU NOIR at Le Bourget in 2019–20, and Les blancs de la couleur, la couleur du blanc in New York, in 2022.

Simon Hantaï: Azzurro Blue

Simon Hantaï: Azzurro Blue

In conjunction with Azzurro, an exhibition of paintings by Simon Hantaï at Gagosian, Rome, we share the catalogue essay by curator Anne Baldassari. Here Baldassari focuses on the significance of blue in the artist’s practice, illuminating his affinity with Italy and the influence on his work of its classical painting tradition.

Rachel Whiteread: … And the Animals Were Sold

Rachel Whiteread: … And the Animals Were Sold

An installation by Rachel Whiteread in the Palazzo della Ragione, Bergamo, Italy, commissioned by Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo and cocurated by Lorenzo Giusti and Sara Fumagalli, opened in June of 2023 and ran into the fall. Conceived in relation to the city, the architecture of the site, and the history of the region, it comprised sixty sculptures made with local types of stone. Fumagalli writes on the exhibition and architect Luca Cipelletti speaks with Whiteread.

Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

Rachel Whiteread: Shy Sculpture

Rachel Whiteread: Shy Sculpture

On the occasion of the unveiling of her latest Shy Sculpture, in Kunisaki, Japan, Rachel Whiteread joined curator and art historian Fumio Nanjo for a conversation about this ongoing series.They address the origins of these sculptures and the details of each project.

Tatiana Trouvé: Le grand atlas de la désorientation

Tatiana Trouvé: Le grand atlas de la désorientation

In this video, Tatiana Trouvé provides an overview of her latest installation, presented at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. The exhibition, whose title translates to The Great Atlas of Disorientation, includes a selection of drawings and sculptures that create fantastical landscapes where reality engages in infinite exchanges with its doubles.

Simon Hantaï: Les blancs de la couleur, la couleur du blanc

Simon Hantaï: Les blancs de la couleur, la couleur du blanc

Anne Baldassari reflects on the art historical influences and radical breaks reflected in the artist’s work with color.

Tatiana Trouvé and Jean-Michel Geneste

In Conversation
Tatiana Trouvé and Jean-Michel Geneste

Tatiana Trouvé speaks with Jean-Michel Geneste, archaeologist and curator, about the paradoxes of her practice: absence and presence, the ancient and the contemporary, the natural and the human-made.

Simon Hantaï

Simon Hantaï

Anne Baldassari reflects on the time she spent working with Simon Hantaï on an ultimately unrealized stained-glass commission for the Cathédrale Saint-Cyr-et-Sainte-Julitte, Nevers, and explains how this endeavor served as the catalyst for an exhibition of Hantaï’s paintings that she curated at Gagosian, Le Bourget, in 2019.

Tatiana Trouvé: The Residents

Tatiana Trouvé: The Residents

Tatiana Trouvé discusses her installation The Residents (2021), commissioned by Artangel for the exhibition Afterness on Orford Ness, a former military testing site in Suffolk, England

Tatiana Trouvé: In the Studio

Behind the Art
Tatiana Trouvé: In the Studio

Join the artist in her studio as she speaks about her new series of drawings, From March to May. Trouvé describes the genesis of the project and the essential role its creation played in keeping her connected with the outside world during the difficult months of pandemic-related lockdown.

Bourse de Commerce

Bourse de Commerce

William Middleton traces the development of the new institution, examining the collaboration between the collector François Pinault and the architect Tadao Ando in revitalizing the historic space. Middleton also speaks with artists Tatiana Trouvé and Albert Oehlen about Pinault’s passion as a collector, and with the Bouroullec brothers, who created design features for the interiors and exteriors of the museum.

Tatiana Trouvé: From March to May

Tatiana Trouvé: From March to May

A portfolio of the artist’s drawings made during lockdown. Text by Jesi Khadivi.

Augurs of Spring

Augurs of Spring

As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.

Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2020

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2020

The Winter 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jenny Saville’s Prism (2020) on its cover.

Tom Eccles and Kiki Smith on Rachel Whiteread

In Conversation
Tom Eccles and Kiki Smith on Rachel Whiteread

On the occasion of Artist Spotlight: Rachel Whiteread, curator Tom Eccles and artist Kiki Smith speak about the work of Rachel Whiteread through the lens of their personal friendships with her. They discuss her public projects from the early 1990s to the present, the relationship between drawing and sculpture in her practice, and the way her works reveal the memories embedded in familiar everyday objects.

Rachel Whiteread and Ann Gallagher

In Conversation
Rachel Whiteread and Ann Gallagher

Rachel Whiteread speaks to Ann Gallagher about a new group of resin sculptures for an exhibition at Gagosian in London. They discuss the works’ emphasis on surface texture, light, and reflection.

Uncanny Delights: Sculpture by John Chamberlain, Urs Fischer, and Charles Ray

Uncanny Delights: Sculpture by John Chamberlain, Urs Fischer, and Charles Ray

Catalyzed by the exhibition Crushed, Cast, Constructed: Sculpture by John Chamberlain, Urs Fischer, and Charles Ray, Alice Godwin examines the legacy and development of a Surrealist ethos in selected works from three contemporary sculptors.

Rachel Whiteread on Piero della Francesca

Rachel Whiteread on Piero della Francesca

Rachel Whiteread writes about the Italian artist’s Baptism of Christ (after 1437) and what has drawn her to this painting, from her first experience of it at a young age to the present day.

Cast of Characters

Cast of Characters

James Lawrence explores how contemporary artists have grappled with the subject of the library.