Exhibition preview·Paris
Esther Schipper turns its Paris rooms into a breathing interior for Philippe Parreno's light, blinds and sensing antennae
Esther Schipper's Paris gallery on Place Vendome has opened a Philippe Parreno presentation that treats the apartment-like space as an active participant. On view from 20 October to 21 November 2026, sensing antennae, motorised blinds and glowing wallpaper shift the rooms continuously, so no two visits play out the same way.
Esther Schipper has turned its Paris gallery on Place Vendome into a domestic interior that behaves like a living organism for a new Philippe Parreno presentation, on view from 20 October to 21 November 2026. Rather than hanging a fixed arrangement of objects, the gallery has let architecture, daylight and machinery share the stage, so that the rooms themselves change over the course of a visit and no two encounters with the show are quite identical.
At the centre of the installation sits Membrane, a cluster of antennae that registers temperature, air pressure, humidity and even breath, then translates that atmospheric information into movement and light across the space. Two motorised blinds travel independently across the windows, alternately covering and uncovering the openings in a rhythm that recalls eyes opening and closing, and their motion constantly reframes how bright or dim the rooms appear. Those shifting conditions, in turn, charge Chronochromes, a 2026 wallpaper patterned with a palm motif on a phosphorescent ground: the surface stores energy while lit and releases it as a glow once the room darkens, fading slowly back into shadow.
Longer-running works return in new configurations alongside these recent pieces. Happy Ending, begun in 2014, and Moving Lamps, begun in 2024, flicker with an almost automaton-like presence, while a new bas-relief, Marquee, pulses with light in predetermined sequences and plays tricks with perspective. Together they extend Parreno's long-standing interest in duration, in objects that seem to act on their own, and in exhibitions that unfold in time rather than sitting still.
The Paris show arrives in a busy season for the artist: his film Riverrun receives its world premiere at the Rome Film Festival on 24 October, and a further exhibition, 5 Moons, opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney on 21 November. The Vendome rooms, meanwhile, offer the most intimate version of his approach, where an ordinary apartment becomes a stage on which light, air and machines quietly perform.
