Introduction

Philippe Parreno: November is a major solo exhibition comprising some 15 mixed-media works ranging from such seminal films as The Boy from Mars to installations such as Speech Bubbles. This exhibition is not merely a survey of previous works but is seen by Parreno as an opportunity to revisit and even refabricate older works in order to transform the gallery spaces at IMMA. The title November is a starting point for injecting life and energy into the exhibition as the newly adapted works are exhibited from the month of November. As part of the Irish Film Institute programme a new film by Philippe Parreno, 8 June 1968, 2009, will be screened for the first time in Ireland, along with his ground-breaking earlier film, Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait, 2006, made in collaboration with Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, creates a real-time portrait of the soccer star Zinédine Zidane. Filmed during the course of a match between Real Madrid and Villareal on 25 April 2005 and using 17 cameras all trained on the title character, the film documents literally every movement Zidane makes for 90 minutes, resulting in an unique and immersive portrait of an athlete in action. For his exhibition at IMMA Parreno has adapted existing works such as Orange Bay (After Gabriel Tarde’s Fragment of Future History), 2002, in which orange plexiglas is placed in the windows of the galleries creating an orange glow that bathes the space in a surreal light, transforming the way we see the exhibition spaces. While in Speech Bubbles, 2009, an installation of helium balloons, Parreno has changed the colour of the original work Speech Bubbles, 1997, from white to gold. The cartoon shaped speech bubbles, which where originally created to carry trade union slogans during a demonstration, appear in this installation as a cloud of bubbles, empty of words, collecting on the ceiling suggesting a potential or suspended discourse which may or may not occur. Philippe Parreno: November questions notions of time, reality and representation, as well as exhibition-making and performance. Parreno’s work develops from different sources ranging across art theory, philosophy, science fiction, popular culture and film, adopting many different forms such as installation, performance, photography, drawing, sculpture and film. His practice is rooted in Conceptual Art and is highly experimental, dealing with issues surrounding the presentation of art, and also its interpretation and meaning. Parreno questions the concept of authorship and has worked in collaboration with many artists. He belongs to a generation of highly influential artists from the 1990s, including Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, Jorge Pardo, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon and Carsten Höller. In 2006 he co-curated the experimental exhibition all hawaii eNtrées / luNar reGGae at IMMA with Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA. The exhibition is an international collaboration between Kunsthalle, Zürich; Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Bard College, New York, where it will be shown in Spring 2010. For each venue Parreno created different exhibitions in close dialogue with the curator.