EXCEPTIONAL EXTENSION OF THE INSTALLATION TO BREATHE AT GALERIES LAFAYETTE PARIS HAUSSMANN UNTIL 29 OCTOBER 2023

On Galeries Lafayette’s invitation, Korean artist Kimsooja illuminates the department store’s magnificent architecture with her light-oriented installation "To Breathe". By covering the iconic glass dome in Galeries Lafayette’s Paris Haussmann store with a special film that diffracts natural light into all the colours of the rainbow, Kimsooja transforms the dome’s external surfaces and internal spaces into iridescent landscapes that shift and change throughout the day. For this site-specific installation (the first in Paris on this scale), Kimsooja explores the building’s sensory and meditative qualities by focusing visitors’ attention on light to create an environment conducive to contemplation.

Having already welcomed several thousand visitors since its opening on 14 April 2023, Kimsooja and Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann wish to extend the duration of this site-specific installation until 29 October 2023.
This exceptional extension will give visitors special access to the interstitial dome space: this summer, as part of the Heritage tours organised every weekend; during the European Heritage Days on 16 and 17 September; and during the week of Paris+ by Art Basel from 16 to 22 October 2023.

USEFUL INFORMATION

Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann - 40 boulevard Haussmann 75009 Paris

FROM JACQUES GRÜBER TO KIMSOOJA

Centred around the store’s historic glass dome, Kimsooja’s installation creates an unprecedented dialogue with this iconic element of Galeries Lafayette’s architectural heritage. When it was first built back in 1912, the dome flooded the store’s interior with a multitude of hues thanks to the stained-glass windows designed by Jacques Grüber, since removed and replaced with white glass. By cleverly bringing coloured light back into the heart of this historic art nouveau building, Kimsooja’s installation pays poetic tribute to the original project and atmosphere. "To Breathe" weaves a strong but delicate thread between works of art imagined more than a century apart.

In the interstitial dome space, the sound of the artist breathing will permeate the air, along with the light transformed by her artwork titled A Weaving Factory, 1994 - 2013. Initially slow and barely perceptible, her inhalation and exhalation will gradually accelerate to become increasingly present – until the vitality of breathing intermingles with the sensory experience of colour. Surrounded by the rhythmic sound of breathing and the shifting chromatic landscape, the visitor is offered a unique opportunity for meditation and contemplation. By making two essential elements of life – air and light – visible and tangible, the artist suffuses the store with creative energy and invites each visitor to actively experience it for themselves.

KIMSOOJA

A nomadic artist whose work revolves around the themes of exile and travel, Kimsooja explores the idea of movement – one’s own and other people’s – and the narratives it generates. For more than 40 years, the artist has focused on one of her culture’s timeless traditions: the bottari. This Korean word refers to a bundle wrapped in fabric, which Kimsooja sees “as a self-contained world – but one which can contain everything, like a vessel, materially and conceptually”. By reappropriating the bottari as both an object and a symbol, the artist contemplates and questions the experience of migration, from departure to arrival and in-between, while also addressing the issue of status – one’s own and that of others.

A proponent of a principle she calls “non-doing” and “non- making”, Kimsooja takes a contemplative aesthetic approach based on perception and observation. By focusing the viewer’s attention on a particular object or phenomenon, the artist makes way for apparitions that question the forces at work in art and in life, inviting everyone to feel and experience the world through all its surfaces. Kimsooja’s site-specific installations transform a particular space and make it possible to perceive intangible concepts like the passage of time. Her work has a strong meditative and introspective dimension. To fully experience and appreciate it, visitors need to be attentive and receptive to their environment.

"TO BREATHE"