In autumn 2019, Palais de Tokyo is devoting all of its exhibition spaces to the French artistic scene. 

With:
Nils Alix-Tabeling, Mali Arun, Fabienne Audéoud, Carlotta Bailly-Borg, Grégoire Beil, Martin Belou, Jean-Luc Blanc, Maurice Blaussyld, Anne Bourse, Kévin Bray, Madison Bycroft, Julien Carreyn, Marc Camille Chaimowicz X We Do Not Work Alone, Antoine Château, Nina Childress, Jean Claus, Jean-Alain Corre, Jonas Delaborde et Hendrik Hegray, Bertrand Dezoteux, Vidya Gastaldon, Corentin Grossmann, Agata Ingarden, Renaud Jerez, Pierre Joseph, Laura Lamiel, Anne Le Troter, Antoine Marquis, Caroline Mesquita, Anita Molinero, Aude Pariset, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Marine Peixoto, Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Antoine Renard, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Linda Sanchez, Alain Séchas, Anna Solal, Kengné Téguia, Sarah Tritz, Nicolas Tubéry, Turpentine, Adrien Vescovi, Nayel Zeaiter.

The notion lurking behind “future, former, fugitive,” a formula taken from the writer Olivier Cadiot, is what is most evocative. The present, thus, owes as much to aspirations coming from a world yet-tobe as it owes to the workings of the past, which are continually active. It is a present that also comes in the form of a fugue or an escapade, as evoked here, in an era when the horizon has become opaque, and in which many artists and citizens now search for other ways of being.

It is this present with a “sidestep” that drives the 44 artists and collectives included in this exhibition devoted to the French scene. They carefully engage, implicate and complicate the present. They culture it with broad, communicative artworks or circumscribe it through more intimate fictions. Maintaining a caustic relationship with the contemporary, sometimes obsessive about the ways they express how they belong in the world, the artists featured here escape as far as they can from finite definitions and the influences of fashion or opportunity.