Parallel universe: Laurent Grasso’s beguiling reinvention of a Corsican Beaux-Arts museum
The Palais Fesch, an imposing 19th century building on the waterfront of the Corsican capital of Ajaccio, houses France’s largest collection of Italian paintings outside the Louvre. There are works by Botticelli, Michelangelo, Titian, Veronese and many others – interspersed among portraits and busts of the island’s most illustrious family, the Bonapartes.
It’s not the most obvious setting for showing contemporary art. But this hasn’t stopped director Philippe Costamagna from staging exhibitions of unusual audacity. Following a much-lauded collaboration with American photographer Andres Serrano in 2014, Costamagna has now worked with French conceptual artist Laurent Grasso to reinvent the museum’s top floor.
Titled ’Paramuseum’, Grasso’s show at the Fesch combines paintings and sculptures from the museum’s collection and his own work in creative configurations. By challenging representations of political power and religious might, and blurring the boundaries between meteorology and myth, Grasso plunges his viewers into an oddly beguiling parallel universe.
On entering ’Paramuseum’, the viewer is greeted by a long wall with 43 historical portraits. Grasso had selected them for their subjects’ piercing gaze, and hung them so the 43 pairs of eyes are horizontally aligned. Their presence is made eerier by Grasso’s neons on the opposite wall, which show epoch-defining dates (among them the destruction of Pompeii and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake).
More eyes scrutinise the viewer throughout the show. Disembodied pairs, borrowed from the Fesch’s portraits, brim with enigma on new canvases. There are also images of ghostly saints, transferred from larger paintings onto silver-coated wooden blocks. Grasso has reversed the power dynamic of the usual art exhibition, and made his viewers into objects of the artworks’ gaze.
Old and new works are juxtaposed to stirring effect. One room sets 17th-century portraits of ecclesiastical portraits against Grasso’s marble sculpture, showing a heron whose beak is obstructed by an egg. Titled S.T. (short for ’sile tace’, which means ’keep silent’ in Latin), the piece nods to signs within the Vatican, and more broadly the church’s demands for silent obedience. This critical view of religion is then complicated by Grasso’s photograph of a priest and astronomer at work at the Vatican observatory.
Another room brings together historical busts of Napoleon’s father, brother, sister, brother-in-law and niece with a film by Grasso, featuring sculptures of fantastic beasts from the Garden of Bomarzo in Viterbo, Italy – a whimsical allegory for the enduring power of the Napoleonic legend.
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
Further commenting on the allure of temporal power, Grasso presents a new film, Élysée, in the museum’s Grande Galerie. Shot in the French president’s office at the Palais de l’Élysée, it draws attention to furniture, fittings and day-to-day objects that have been gilded with gold, and uses the act of gilding as a metaphor for investing great power in a head of state.
Elsewhere, Grasso’s best-known film, Soleil double, is on view. Twin suns are shown blazing down on the magnificent Museo della Civiltà Romana in Rome, in allusion to the legend of Nemesis, a dwarf star that would one day collide with our solar system and cause its destruction. A sculptural representation, consisting of two overlaid yellow neon circles, illuminates the room next door. It shares the space with a group of old landscape paintings, which Grasso had chosen for their aged, yellowed appearance. Under the neon circles’ golden glow, the paintings seem rejuvenated – just as the Palais Fesch has taken on a new life under Grasso’s masterful intervention.
INFORMATION
’Laurent Grasso: Paramuseum’ is on view until 3 October, with the support of Galerie Perrotin. For more information, visit the Palais Fesch-musée des Beaux-Arts website
Photography by Claire Dorn, courtesy of Palais Fesch-musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio & Galerie Perrotin
ADDRESS
Palais Fesch-musée des Beaux-Arts
50-52 Rue du Cardinal Fesch
20000 Ajaccio
Corsica
TF Chan is a former editor of Wallpaper* (2020-23), where he was responsible for the monthly print magazine, planning, commissioning, editing and writing long-lead content across all pillars. He also played a leading role in multi-channel editorial franchises, such as Wallpaper’s annual Design Awards, Guest Editor takeovers and Next Generation series. He aims to create world-class, visually-driven content while championing diversity, international representation and social impact. TF joined Wallpaper* as an intern in January 2013, and served as its commissioning editor from 2017-20, winning a 30 under 30 New Talent Award from the Professional Publishers’ Association. Born and raised in Hong Kong, he holds an undergraduate degree in history from Princeton University.
-
Bar Spero, in Washington DC, nods to the playful nature of Spanish cuisine
Bar Spero is a Spanish seafood bar and grill designed by Streetsense and led by chef Johnny Spero
By Sofia de la Cruz Published
-
Colourful card game wins Design Museum’s Design Ventura competition
Annual design competition Design Ventura was won by students from The Piggott School, who created a fun I Spy-inspired card game
By Léa Teuscher Published
-
Tour a Chilean pavilion perched on the coast: a sanctuary for sleep and star-gazing
Algarrobo-based architecture studio Whale! has designed a Chilean pavilion for rest and relaxation, overlooking a nature reserve on the Pacific coast
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Damien Hirst takes over Château La Coste
Damien Hirst’s ‘The Light That Shines’ at Château La Coste includes new and existing work, and takes over the entire 500-acre estate in Provence
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Tia-Thuy Nguyen encases Chateau La Coste oak tree in tonne of stainless steel strips
Tia-Thuy Nguyen’s ‘Flower of Life’ lives in the grounds of sculpture park and organic winery Château La Coste in France
By Harriet Quick Published
-
Royal College of Physicians Museum presents its archives in a glowing new light
London photography exhibition ‘Unfamiliar’, at the Royal College of Physicians Museum (23 January – 28 July 2023), presents clinical tools as you’ve never seen them before
By Martha Elliott Published
-
Paris art exhibitions: a guide to exhibitions this weekend
As Emily in Paris fever puts the city of love at the centre of the cultural map, stay-up-to-date with our guide to the best Paris art exhibitions
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Cyprien Gaillard on chaos, reorder and excavating a Paris in flux
We interviewed French artist Cyprien Gaillard ahead of his major two-part show, ‘Humpty \ Dumpty’ at Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette Anticipations (until 8 January 2023). Through abandoned clocks, love locks and asbestos, he dissects the human obsession with structural restoration
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Museum of Sex to open Miami outpost in spring 2023
The Museum of Sex will expand with a new Miami outpost in spring 2023, housed in a former warehouse reimagined by Snøhetta and inaugurated with an exhibition by Hajime Sorayama
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Remembering Pierre Soulages (1919-2022), a pioneer of post-war abstraction
Pierre Soulages, the pioneering French printmaker, sculptor and ‘painter of black’, has died aged 102
By Diane Theunissen Published
-
Reclaim the Earth, urge artists at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo
We discover the group exhibition ‘Reclaim the Earth’, a wake-up call for humans to reconsider our relationship with the planet (until 4 September 2022)
By Amy Serafin Last updated