Perrotin is pleased to announce its participation in the 10th edition of Photofairs Shanghai, presenting works by gallery artists Sophie Calle, Leslie Hewitt, and JR. Through their distinct artistic practices and narrative approaches, these artists redefine the possibilities of imagery within contemporary visual expression. Drawing from personal memory, social identity, and urban space, they engage in a profound dialogue that transcends the boundaries between visual imagery and conceptual discourse.
Alternately described as a conceptual artist, photographer, video artist and even detective, Sophie Calle has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide since the late 70s. In her rituals, she blurs the boundaries between the intimate and the public, reality and fiction, art and life, while leaving room for chance. A retrospective of her work was held at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2003, then at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen. In 2007, Sophie Calle represented France at the 52nd Venice Biennale with the exhibition “Take Care of Yourself”, which then traveled to some twenty museums around the world. Several solo exhibitions of Sophie Calle have also been held at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Canada (2015), the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi (2015), the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum (2016), the Museo Tamayo, Mexico (2014), the Centro Cultural Néstor Kirchner in Buenos Aires (2015), La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona (2016), Fort Mason San Francisco (2017), the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris (2017) and Château la Coste, France (2018). Sophie Calle received the Hasselblad award for photography in 2010 and the ICP Infinity award in 2017.
Working with photography, sculpture, and site-specific installations, Leslie Hewitt addresses fluid notions of time. Her work oscillates between the illusionary potential of photography and the physical weight of sculpture. In her photographed arrangements, she isolates personal effects and the residue of material culture to consider the fragile nature of everyday life. Her approach to photography and sculpture revisits the still life genre from a post-minimalist/civil-rights perspective. Her geometric compositions, which she frames and crystallizes through the spare assemblage of ordinary things, suggest the porosity between intimate and sociopolitical lives. Whether discreetly arranged in conceptually entangled layers or presented plainly, Hewitt often includes or is inspired by mementos such as family pictures, as well as books and vintage magazines that reference the Black literary and popular-cultures of her upbringing. Her practice as an artist points to the mechanisms of constructing meaning and memory through decisively challenging both by unfolding formal, rather than didactic, connections in her contrapuntal compositions and a distinctive take on spatiality. Hewitt studied at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the Yale University School of Art, and at New York University, where she was a Clark Fellow in the Africana and Visual Culture Studies programs.
JR works at the intersection of photography, public art, filmmaking, and social engagement. Over the last two decades, he has created monumental public projects and site-specific interventions in cities all over the world. Whether it be pasting on homes in a Brazilian favela (2008-2009), hosting a picnic across the US-Mexico border fence (2017), working alongside 400 volunteers to create a trompe-l’oeil at the Louvre in Paris (2019), or organizing a procession around the enormous banner of a refugee child in the Sahara Desert (2022), JR seeks to involve everyone in the act of artistic creation, hoping to create conversations and drive social change. He has exhibited his artworks and installations internationally, including the Kulturhuset Stadsteatern in Stockholm with his first exhibition "Déplacé.e.s" in the Nordic region (2024), at the Venice Biennale (2022), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019), and the NGV Triennial (2020). After opening at the Brooklyn Museum, USA (2019), his solo exhibition "JR: Chronicles" traveled to Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2021), Groninger Museum, Netherlands (2021), Kunsthalle Munich, Germany (2022) and Lotte Museum, Seoul, South Korea (2023). JR is also the director of four full-length documentaries: Women Are Heroes (2011); the Academy Award-nominated Faces and Places (2017), co-directed by Agnès Varda; the Emmy-nominated Paper & Glue (2021); and most recently, Tehachapi, which premiered at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival.
