Perrotin New York is pleased to present Behind the Curtain by Sophie Calle, an exhibition that disrupts conventional ideas of perception. In 2023, Calle became the first artist to take over the Picasso Museum galleries in Paris. Behind the Curtain will include two series on Picasso’s most emblematic paintings. Also on view, In Memory of Frank Gehry's Flowers imagines a memorial in honor of the renown architect, and Calle's Parce que series pairs photographs and poems that disrupt traditional processing of information.
Concurrently, Sophie Calle will present an exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York titled Sophie Calle: On the Hunt, on view September 5 - October 18.
On October 17, Art21 will premiere an episode featuring Sophie Calle as part of their Peabody Award-winning biennial program, Art in the Twenty-First Century on PBS. On September 9th, Sophie Calle will participate in a conversation with Bette Gordon and co-hosted by Art21, including an advanced screening of Calle's segment.
SERIES ON VIEW
Because, 2018
Each of the artworks composing the series consists of a wooden frame where a photograph is displayed, under a curtain embroidered with a sentence explaining the reasons triggering the photographic act. The curtain thus covers the photograph until lifted by the viewer, unveiling the narrative explaining the picture’s origin. Because thus reverses the traditional relationship between image and text, and disturbs our conventional perception and processing of information.
In Memory of Frank Gehry's Flowers, 2014
Since Sophie Calle met Frank Gehry in Los Angeles in 1984, when he offered to be her impresario, he sent her flowers on the day of all of her exhibition openings. The work In Memory of Frank Gehry's Flowers gathers photographs of these ephemeral gifts. Each of the 25 elements of the series consists in a photograph depicting dried flowers, and in one installation. The latter is composed of 11 photographs of flowers in Plexiglas frames and a vase designed by Frank Gehry displayed on a pink shelf. In Memory of Frank Gehry’s Flowers evokes a memorial, and is part of Sophie Calle’s ongoing sublimation of mourning through art. In Memory of Frank Gehry’s Flowers also presents another recurring approach of the conceptual artist: her propensity to elevate mundane or throwaway objects through a process evoking that of the archive, and conferring to them a new meaning.
"I met Frank Gehry in 1984. I asked him where the angels were in Los Angeles. He answered my question and, out of nowhere, offered to become my impresario. I had found my angel. The next day, the Fred Hoffman Gallery contacted me to propose a meeting. A date for an exhibition was set. Ever since that day, for each of my openings, Frank Gehry sends me flowers that I keep and preserve."
Series Picassos in lockdown, 2022
For the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death in 2023, the Musée Picasso in Paris invited me to create a show in dialogue with the artist. I hesitated: I could not face the overwhelming presence of his work. When the museum closed due to the pandemic, the paintings were covered for protection. Wrapped up, hidden, Underneath — a ghost-like, less intimidating presence that I immediately photographed.
Phantom Picassos, 2023
Paul Drawing, Man with a Pipe, Swimming Woman, The Death of Casagemas and Bather with a Book were missing due to being on loan. I asked the curators, guards, and other museum staff to describe them to me, and draw them. When they returned, I veiled them in the memories they leave behind in their absence.
Born in Paris, France
Lives and works in Malakoff, France
Over the last four decades, Calle has become known for artworks that blur the boundaries between private and public spaces, reality and fiction, art and life. Internationally acclaimed, Sophie Calle represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and has exhibited in major museums across the globe, including Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Art Institute of Chicago; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, Chile. Her work is held in the collections of numerous prestigious institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Louisiana Museum, Denmark, among others.
More about the artist
