Artists

Ari Marcopoulos

Press release

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is giving carte blanche to artist Ari Marcopoulos,a photographer and filmmaker emblematic of the New York underground, dedicated to offer a fresh view on the world of skateboarding. For the first time at the Museum, his work Brown Bag is being presented in a special installation. In the same way that he looks at his subjects from both an insider's and an artist’s perspective, Ari Marcopoulos is also proposing a fresh reading of certain works in the MAM collections, through the filter of the counter-cultures he is so familiar with.

Curator : Olivia Gaultier-Jeanroy

In addition to its role on the modern and contemporary art scene, the Palais de Tokyo site – and its esplanade in particular – is also a world skateboarding centre. From the 1990s onwards, its distinctive architecture and ground surface rapidly made the area known as the "Dôme" a hot spot for local and then international skateboarders. The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris wanted to pay tribute to an activity that has become a feature of its everyday existence and is being promoted as part of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. After making its debut as a "new sport" at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, skateboarding is now one of the four additional sports in the events scheduled for Paris this summer.

To mark the occasion, the Musée has given carte blanche to the artist Ari Marcopoulos, known for his work on youth culture including and beyond skateboarding. In 2021, the museum acquired his film Brown Bag (1994/2020), featuring shots of skateboarders filmed by the artist in mid-1990s New York and now being shown for the first time.

The screening will be accompanied by a rereading of the Musée d'Art Moderne collection through a selection of works that Marcopoulos compares with his own photographs. His portraits – visual embodiments of the different points of view he proposes in relation to the works in the museum – interact with contributions from artists including Hans Bellmer, Brassaï, Giorgio de Chirico, César, Isa Genzken, Annette Messager, Bruce Nauman, Daniel Turner and Christopher Wool. Through some fifty works, the exhibition addresses movement, the body and architecture, all themes dear to the urban cultures Ari Marcopoulos has been interested in throughout his career.