"Gakona" at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Roman Signer, Parapluies, 2009

Courtesy Galerie Art:Concept, Paris, Photo: André Morin

I recently wrote a review of the Palais de Tokyo's group show "Gakona," an exhibition featuring Ceal Floyer, Roman Signer, Laurent Grasso and Micol Assaël inspired by the secretive experiments with electromagnetism supposedly being carried out by the American government in smalltown Alaska. And while I did love the show, especially the audacious sculptural installations by Signer and Grasso, I was even more impressed by the Palais de Tokyo itself as a model for a contemporary art gallery.

An aerial view of the Palais de Tokyo along Paris' Seine

Built as Tokyo's exhibition grounds for the Universal Exhibition of 1937, the building that houses the Palais de Tokyo has a fairly standard layout for a contemporary art gallery, but it was the way in which they used the space to facilitate programming that was really impressive. Alongside the main exhibition room which held the group show, there are also two rotating smaller galleries called "modules" that present new projects by local artists each month and a new rooftop space that currently hosts Hotel Everland: a touring one room hotel created by Swiss artists L/B (Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann). There is also a cafe and lounge inside the gallery which are free and open to the public (both were packed while we were there), an amazing artist multiples store and an impressive bookshop. The fact that the gallery is fairly centrally located, and open until midnight (!) every day certainly helps to bring people in.

Hotel Everland on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo.
A one night stay costs 375 Euros.

But I think what most impressed me was the gallery's public programming initiatives. Alongside weekly events programmed to accompany the main exhibitions that included presentations by the local chapter of Dorkbot and presentations by scientists and researchers, the gallery also features a "Bureau des Médiateurs" or an Animateur Office where the facilitators stay throughout the day, awaiting visitors' questions or requests for tours. Their office functions as a normal office would, with computers and desks, but also features a library for visitors and an ongoing screening room where art films and commercial movies related to the topic of the current show are screened for free. The gallery's quarterly magazine, Palais, which you can pick up for 1 Euro at the admissions desk, likewise features articles in English and French and melds contemporary art stories (like interviews with artist Laurent Grasso) with non-art related topics (like a feature on amateur experiments with electrical currents and a short story about Nikola Tesla by Cory Doctorow).

Inside the Palais de Tokyo, from www.ivarhagendoorn.com

Altogether, the Palais de Tokyo manages to create a really accessible, fun and playful environment where serious and compelling contemporary art is presented to the public in a new way. It felt a lot like a science centre for adults, which I'm sure was helped by the topic of the show, but the decided lack of pretense and amount of bubbling noise and laughter in the gallery was so strange and refreshing. It seemed like the physical manifestation of what so many contemporary art galleries in North America aspire to be, but never quite manage to achieve. Though, as Cait pointed out, the fact that we found it so engaging and accessible was because it drew so much from skate culture, which is something that might alienate older audiences that are traditionally museums' key demographics.

In any case, I highly recommend it for anyone who's heading to Paris any time soon and would love to hear thoughts from others who have been there.