Yesterday i went to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris to check out the new exhibition, “Nouvelles du Monde Renversé�? (“News from the Upside-down World�?), and remembered why i worship this place so much.
The first room i entered was filled with Michel Blazy‘s Post Patman installation. The smell that attacks the nostrils as you step inside the space indicates that the artist is into the organic, the perishable, the mould-making. There’s first the striking Patman which was already featured in the previous exhibition 5’000’000’000 Years. This kind of big atomic mushroom is made of 91 kilos of soy noodles.
Right in front of Patman, there are chickens made of chocolate, they behave, they don’t mutate, nor smell, they just wander about and seem to ignore visitors. The bunch of carrots quietly rotting on the floor still look pretty harmless. What jumps on your nose though is the wall painting made with mashed potatoes and beetroot purée, it is slowly flaking off, crumbling to the floor and designing what turns out to be really gorgeous patterns. I was particularly fascinated by a sculpture started a few years ago and made of halves of orange peels piled on top of each other and adorned by cobwebs. They elegantly mold away and they too look like mushrooms.
The funniest part were green trash bins filled with soap that bubble and fly onto your hair if you don’t pay attention. There’s also a sculpture made of cat biscuits, a monster carpet covered with caramel, living birds are feasting on mould and i apparently missed the roses made of bacon which were hanging from the ceiling maybe because i was too impressed by the sofa dipped in chocolate above our heads. There were many other pieces whose ingredients i’d rather not ask about.
If you return in a month, the appearance of most of these living works will have changed, some might even have disappeared. Blazy goes to the Palais de Tokyo every week to check the evolution of his pieces and add a new work to the show.
The exhibition is experienced over time and i wish i can come back to see how the pieces are sprouting and evolving. Who knows what it will look like on May 6 when Blazy’s exhibition closes? Bon appetit!
Images on flickr and on the PdT website.
More fungi: Robot moved by a slime mould’s fears; Microcosmos and Mould dress; test for magic mushrooms glows in dark.