(A review of a place:)

The Tokyo Palace (Le Palais de Tokyo) (Palais de Tokyo (official site))

A discussion of the Palais de Tokyo as a site for the creation and presentation of contemporary art.

The Tokyo Palace (Palais de Tokyo) is a wing of an impressive 1937 neocolonial monumental building. It is a site of contemporary creation. The second wing of the building houses the museum of modern art of the city of Paris. (The latter is not to be confused with the national museum of contemporary art, the Centre Pompidou.)

The spacious building is barren and open, and the original monumental intentions are transformed into a feel of industrial wasteland (although in reality, it has little to do with the latter). The space is divived into a large exhibition hall, a restaurant, an attractive contemporary art bookshop, and a cheap and small self-service cafe. (In the summer both the cafe and the restaurant occupy a large terrace between the two wings of the building, overlooking the Seine and the lower level terrace with the occasional skaters.)

The main attractive feature of the Tokyo Palace is the enormous space it creates in the mind of the visitor. The barren structure, the often sparse occupation of the available exhibition space, the many corners with plenty of seats and a coffeetable, the very high ceilings, the adequate opening hours (until midnight), and the peaceful co-existence with the grafiti on its walls. Likewise, the many exhibitions are more inspirational than revelational: they invite the visitor to think about contemporary art, to explore the space that is opened up by combinations of artworks, of styles and individual artists, and to chat about them in an often multi-cultural environment. Clearly, the center takes its vocation as a site for contemporary creation seriously.

A sample exhibition (see Palais de Tokyo (official site) for all practical information and present exhibitions):

-> TRANSLATION (until 18 september 2005)

The project explores the relationship (translation, shift) between the contemporary work of art as presented in the museum (the Tokyo Palace), the private art collection (of Dakis Joannou from which all the art works in the exhibtion were borowed) and as represented in the typographie of M/M (Paris). The goal is noble, but it largely left to the visitory to reach it. As usual, the works on display vary drastically in quality. The dolls and video of Takashi Murakami, who uses plastic almost man-size puppets (that look like they ran away from a Japanese comic) to make real-life almost childlike poetic video shortstories are of the highest quality, as are the 8 feet silver shiny plastic Moon by Jeff Koons, and Amazing Grace by Nari Ward (: old buggies surrounding and staring at more buggies amassed in the middle of a buggy-gathering, accompanied by music by Mahalia Jackson, reminiscent of tragedy, burial, silent and innocent witnesses). Likewise, Super Sister by Liza Lou (a statue made of cheap plastic pearls with the black girl power of the vibrant seventies) and VB 48 by Vanessa Beecroft (with the unsettling picture of eroticism and the female body of our time as contrasted with the classical statues in the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa) are impressive. And many other works are present. But the exhibition as a whole is only lead by the taste of one man (Dakis Joannou) who does not wish to concentrate on one particular school, and the Tokyo Palace has tried to connect the different artworks by contracting M/M (Paris) to surround the works with their posters, their typographie, and their styling. Instead of creating unity, this device only distracts from the artworks, and puts posters on display without adding to their original value as advertisements. Although the work of M/M (Paris) also contains excellent ideas (e.g. The Alphabet, with Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin), it is not strong and technically refined enough to serve as a universal legend to one man's art collection.

As usual, the exhibition leaves one with a feeling of inspiration rather than with an impression of surprising discovery.

Copyright 2005, by Jan Troost