PARIS.- This winter,
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac celebrates the 30th anniversary of its Parisian galleries with a transformative exhibition bringing together new and historical works by over 60 artists at the Pantin space. Organized in three parts, the exhibition will be unveiled over the course of seven months. The first part opened on Sunday 6th December, thirty years after Thaddaeus Ropac inaugurated the first gallery in Paris in 1990.
At the time, the inaugural exhibition Vertigo curated by Christian Leigh presented to an European audience cutting-edge American art, reflecting the gallery’s focus since its foundation in Salzburg in 1983. Vertigo, a conceptual exhibition comprising works by Peter Halley, Jeff Koons and Sturtevant among others, was described by critic Jerry Saltz as ‘a loss of faith in your own eye, in your own sense of reality’ and charted the course for the gallery’s programme in Paris, which has broadened its scope since.
'The last 30 years in Paris have been incredibly inspiring, challenging, rewarding and, most importantly, particularly stimulating for the artists. I feel very privileged to have been working with many great artists, and I am deeply grateful to them for offering us exhibitions that have become legendary. It has been a joy to evolve in a cosmopolitan city that embraces art and culture with an intense and thought-provoking resonance. From the first day in October 1990 when I opened my one-floor gallery in the Marais, I felt embraced and welcomed by a very unique Parisian art world that offered us the ideal ecosystem to present works by a very wide range of artists to a curious, enthusiastic and discerning audience.' — Thaddaeus Ropac
Over the last 30 years, the gallery in the Marais has gradually grown to span four floors. In the wake of an increasingly dynamic Parisian art scene, the gallery decided to open a second, large-scale space just outside Paris, in a former boiler factory in Pantin. Inaugurated in 2012 with exhibitions by Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys the space allows for site-specific exhibitions on an expansive scale.
The anniversary exhibition 30 Years in Paris opens a dialogue between artists from different generations, artistic movements and cultural backgrounds, reflecting the development and the diversity of the gallery’s programme.
Historical works by Joseph Beuys, Rosemarie Castoro, Gilbert & George, Donald Judd, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sigmar Polke, Arnulf Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Sturtevant, Emilio Vedova and Andy Warhol will be shown alongside recent paintings, installation and sculptures of Oliver Beer, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Tony Cragg, Sylvie Fleury, Wolfgang Laib, Robert Longo, Jack Pierson, Not Vital and Yan Pei-Ming, among others. Important historical installations such as Geburtenbett [Birth Bed] by VALIE EXPORT, first presented in the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1980, will be shown in Paris for the first time. New works are being created or selected especially for the exhibition – notably by Cory Arcangel, Ali Banisadr, Alvaro Barrington, Jules de Balincourt, Georg Baselitz, Adrian Ghenie, Antony Gormley, Alex Katz, Anselm Kiefer, Imi Knoebel, Elizabeth Peyton, Daniel Richter, David Salle, Sean Scully and Erwin Wurm – prefiguring future exhibitions and collaborations.
