Vintage furniture and everyday objects picked up skilfully displayed in the windows.
Two monumental sculptures created from saucepans, hung on the Art Deco windows, on either side of the emblematic escalators designed by Andrée Putman.
The famous Indian artist Subodh Gupta is honored at Le Bon Marché (owned by LVMH, also holder of Le Parisien)
,
until February 19.
" That's wonderful.
I am very moved by the poetry that emerges from the accumulation of these kitchen utensils.
We forget their function of use to retain only their artistic dimension”, enthuses Anne, a Parisian client passionate about art.
"This dialogue between the prosaic world of cooking and the world of luxury embodied by the department store is very striking", underlines Jérémy, his companion.
A sort of giant disco ball made up of aluminum utensils allows the light coming from the windows to be reflected.
LP/Christine Henry
A spectacular bucket and a traditional Indian pot made of 5,000 aluminum pans pour out a cascade of mirror fragments in which are reflected architectural elements of the building and the silhouettes of visitors.
Meeting between “the public, the Bon Marché and the goods”
On the second floor, a hut composed of 2,500 molds, pans, basins, lids and other kitchen utensils, objects suspended by transparent threads, floats in the air.
A sofa installed in its heart allows you to contemplate and even meditate on this vault studded with traditional Indian carved trays, rusty and dented basins, stoves, pots burned by the fire and many other objects.
“Utensils are simple objects.
However, blended together, they speak, in my mind, to life's complicated textures, shades, lines and shadows, as seen in the palms of our hands,” says Subodh Gupta.
The exhibition is titled “Sangam”, named after the confluence of three of India's most sacred rivers, namely the Ganges, Yamuna and Saraswati.
“Confluences because, here, people from all over the world meet.
We are at the confluence of different cultures”, says the artist.
" Subodh Gupta's artistic
Sangam
is the artistic meeting of the public, Bon Marché and merchandise," adds Emma Monteil, cultural project manager for the department store.
Since 2016, the famous establishment on the Left Bank has been inviting representatives of contemporary art to take possession of the premises during the household linen sales.
Ai Weiwei had been chosen for the first artistic meeting.
After Joana Vasconcelos in 2019, Oki Sato in 2020, Prune Nourry in 2021 or even Mehmet Ali Uysal in 2022, Subodh Gupta is the eighth artist to be welcomed.
Considered one of the great names in contemporary art, the Musée de la Monnaie in Paris devoted a first major retrospective to him in 2018.
Continuing a tradition dating back to 1875
"We impose no constraints on them except for the use of white, in homage to the Month of White, imagined by Aristide and Marguerite Boucicaut", specifies Frédéric Bodenes, Artistic and Image Director of the Le Bon Marché Group and initiator of this major contemporary art event in January.
Visionary merchants, the founders of the Parisian department store that inspired “Au Bonheur des Dames” by Émile Zola, were also passionate collectors.
In 1875, they had created a picture gallery within their store, where the works of artists refused at the Salon des Beaux-Arts were exhibited.
Le Bon Marché perpetuates this tradition and also pursues a policy of acquiring works of art and furniture, a large part of which has taken place in the spaces of the department store.