The appointment of Guillaume Désanges at the head of the Palais de Tokyo by Emmanuel Macron, on the proposal of the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, is, perhaps, good news for this institution deserted by its ex-director, Emma Lavigne, left in October for the Bourse de Commerce, flagship of the Pinault collection. The man has proven himself in the field of curatorial exhibitions by endeavoring, since the beginning of the 2000s, to invent formats, durations, spaces, ways of speaking and showing works that are unique. , stunning, divisive, innovative.
Guillaume Désanges, born in 1971, studied business before moving on to a DESS (as we used to say in the 90s) “Visual and multimedia arts” (as we said then). But quickly, he has something that sets him apart from other curators. At Public, an independent art space located a stone’s throw from the Center Pompidou and long closed, it presents an exhibition where the works are visible (and lit) only one following the other. A show between shadow and light confronting works with the invisible, which Désanges will replay a few years later when the Plateau invites him to Paris to design a cycle of exhibitions. He devotes it to raising the mysteries of double-locked rooms. It’s a story…
Désanges, in fact, is a storyteller who, until then, led to the Verrière Hermès in Brussels, a forward-looking program. He also delivered, at the CAPC in Bordeaux, an exhibition devoted to Absalon and his entourage and, in Saint-Nazaire, another devoted to workers’ struggles in the West of France (entitled “Contre-vents”). The list is long. And the steep slope. The Palais de Tokyo needs ideas (but they will not be lacking with Désanges and the whole team of curators already well developed) but above all a viable economic model. The new leader intends, according to the official version, “develop partnerships with a network of Parisian, regional and international institutions, as well as art schools, places of residence or even with the CNAP. Like the practice of “Permaculture”, he proposes a “reasoned sharing»Space and time, alternating exhibition spaces and “Wasteland” that can accommodate other artistic research or experimentation and new possibilities for meeting the public. As long as it grows.
