One Thousand Pictures Falling from One Thousand Walls
With a dozen works including films, installations, sculptures, photographs, and publications, the exhibition by Philippe Parreno (1964, Oran) occupied the entire fourth floor. The artist had organized his works in a way that upset the usual visiting habits of museum spectators. They could hear a muffled sound, but they could understand what it was only as they moved through the exhibition. A strange faded spot on the carpet gave the impression that the sun had gently made its mark over a long stretch of time, but there were no windows in the room. Lingering footsteps in glass puddles recalled another exhibition, Snow Dancing, while a film showed a fictional character who wanted to never die. By telling stories that are often reduced to a sort of “freeze frame,” Parreno explores the plots that form between reality and fiction. He “freezes” images, thus exposing moments borrowed from fiction and bringing them into reality.