Hyundai Commission: Philippe Parreno

Tate

About the Exhibition

Philippe Parreno’s work entitled Anywhen transformed Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall into an experience that plays with time and space, guiding the public through constantly changing stages of light, sound and moving elements. Anywhen was the first commission at Tate after the opening of the Blavatnick Building and it responded to the Turbine Hall’s new position at the center of the museum, an open space connected to the city itself and free for the public to enter from many different levels and directions. As if on a walk through an urban park, visitors to Hyundai Commission: Philippe Parreno: Anywhen encountered events, movements and images that appeared and disappeared over time.


Conceived in collaboration with other visual artists and practitioners, Anywhen was presented as an instrument to be played; a grid of speakers was periodically lowered from the ceiling; a moving light cast a shadow throughout the hall; a large central ‘marquee’ hung suspended over the Turbine Hall bridge. Always growing and metamorphosing, the  exhibition was also accompanied by a changing soundscape that broadcast from several sources, blurring the sense of inside and outside, public and private, natural and technological. Vertical and horizontal acoustic panels, a screen, a grid of speakers and a projector came together in different configurations, and from time to time showed a film featuring a stage ventriloquist and underwater creatures.


Hyundai Commission: Philippe Parreno: Anywhen was curated by Andrea Lissoni, Senior Curator, International Art (Film), Tate Modern with Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.

About the Artist

Philippe Parreno (b. 1964, Oran, Algeria) explores the borders between reality and fiction and is known for investigating and redefining the gallery-going experience. Parreno sees his exhibitions as choreographed spaces that follow a score, during which a series of different events unfold. He treats exhibitions as one coherent whole rather than a series of objects within a space and collaborates with many visual artists as well as musicians, architects, scientists and writers. His work is represented in museum collections including Tate, and Centre Pompidou. He was the first artist to occupy the entirety of the gallery’s expanded space of 22,000 square meters at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2013 and in recent years has held exhibitions at Martin Gropius Bau (2018), Art Institute Chicago (2018), Hangar Bicocca (2015), and Park Avenue Armory (2017).

About the Program

Hyundai Commission

The annual Hyundai Commission is a series of new, site-specific installations by international artists in Tate Modern’s iconic Turbine Hall, made possible by a unique partnership between Tate and Hyundai Motor. The Turbine Hall has hosted some of the world’s most memorable exhibitions and the way artists have interpreted this space has revolutionized public perceptions of contemporary art. The annual Hyundai Commission offers contemporary artists an opportunity to create new work for this unique context while bringing forward many of today’s most pressing questions.

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