Brion Gysin, Le dernier musée @ Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

Brion Gysin, Dreammachine, 1979

In his time, Brion Gysin was vital to the development of mid-century experiments in poetry, painting, and other media. The Musée d'art Moderne has staged a retrospective of Gysin who today looks like a marginal figure, backgrounded by the reputations of his contemporaries such as William Burroughs. It's difficult to know where to start the conversation about Gysin's work because he was so multifaceted as an artist. He worked in painting, photography, music, poetry. But no matter what medium he was working with, conceptually, he was driven by a desire to transcend. Gysin's constant striving for an art to exceed the material and institutional structures is palpable and admirable.

Brion Gysin, Magic Mushrooms, 1961

He had an early fascination with hieroglyphs, particularly in the form of Japanese and Arabic scripts. He saw these scripts, repeated, read from right to left, bottom to top, as a way of breaking out of familiar structures. In addition, he was drawn to their rhythm that he connected to a kind of unconscious expression, otherwise found in LSD tripping. When exploring a script as artistic figure, Gysin would always layer it with a grid, capturing the tension between structure and freedom, the physical and the transcendental. 

Brion Gysin, Naked Lunch, 1959

Another striking tension found in his work is that between the highly conceptual, thus intellectual, and a reach for a beyond. They are also visually abstract, and aesthetically beautiful, often with vibrant colours used to express highly intellectual ideas. Similarly, because there is no more to be seen up close than at a distance, the works tend to have an overall cohesion in spite of the methods of fragmentation that Gysin pursued. The exhibition emphasizes Gysin's contribution to and his work's resonance with Beat Poetry, particularly with the cutting up of written texts to create surrealist visual poetry. That said, rather than admiring his connections to the Beats, I was much more interested in the sheer breadth of his artistic pursuits, his ability to work in many different media, and to incorporate many different traditions and inspirations. Perhaps his interests were too broad and this is why he is posed as attractive for who he knew? 

Brion Gysin, Le dernier Musée, 1973

Among the highlights of the exhibition is Le dernier Musée, a series of photographs presented in thumbnail form taken from his window in rue Saint Martin as he watched the Pompidou Centre being built. The familiar structures and forms of the Pompidou centre echo the grids, squares and lines that preoccupied Gysin across his career. It is as though the architecture was itself influenced by his thinking. There was also something very nostalgic in these colourful contact sheets, as the images witness a moment, not just when the Pompidou was being built, but a turning point in the history and culture of the city. 

Brion Gysin and his Dreammachine, 1961
Perforated metal, electronic motor, light

It is also worth noting that because Brion Gysin is not as well known as some of the artists he influenced and those who were his inspiration, the retrospective at the Musée d'art Moderne was almost empty, while there was a long line to enter the Lee Miller in the adjacent galleries. Given the overcrowding of many of Paris's exhibitions, the slow and relaxed walk through this fascinating exhibition is a welcome respite. 

Normes Corps @ Palais de Tokyo

Cathy de Monchaux, Studio, Wounds, and Battles. Desire is the Reiteration of Hope, 2026 

I am always on the hunt for exhibitions without hoards of visitors and inspired by the promise of empty halls, I went to the Palais de Tokyo last Friday night.There is a large diversity of work on display throughout the building, loosely cohering around the theme of bodies on the margins. I was struck by how often the works challenged, reappropriated, or simply drew to attention the ways in which the design and construction of public space rarely pay attention to those who are not able bodied, or are without power in the social and cultural world. A lovely installation by Benoît Pieron, for example, sees street lights filled with confetti in liquid, reminding of snow globes. Rather than having lights guide our path or keep us safe in a dark street, Pieron's installation has us fascinated by the shimmering movement of the lint. A bench next to one of the light posts encourages us to look at, rather than, be guided by, light. Behaving in a way not prescribed by the organization of public space, Pieron challenges it through inversion.

Benoît Pieron, Vernis à Ombre, 2026
Installation View

Many of the works left no doubt that public space is commanded over by men. Among the exhibits is a film by Pauline Curnier Jardin and the Feel Good Cooperative made together with street workers during lockdown in the EUR quartier of Rome. Made to mark the "celebration" of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the United States La Colonne della Colombo shows sex workers in the quartier imagined by Mussolini to celebrate fascism. It was empowering to watch their appropriation of the space—which today is actually a quartier of ghettoization—to celebrate people who are otherwise downtrodden. In full costume, seemingly happy to perform for the camera, the street workers indulged both live and film audiences in a carnavalesque, thus subversive, romp filled with humour and wit.

Pauline Curnier Jardin, La Colonne della Colombo, 2023

Another striking film shows aging women in prison, communicating with each other, creating community through the walls, much to the chagrin of a young male guard. Qu'un sang Impure (2019) is clearly drawing on Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour (1950) as we see the women passing gum, exhaling smoke, and expressing desire through the walls. However, unlike Genet's film, neither the women nor the film are restrained. The arousal, masturbation, and ecstasy of women often assumed to be sexually barren, is full throttle and confronting. We do not see genitalia though there is explicit masturbation, leaving nothing to the imagination. It is, once again, refreshing and liberating to see people so often cast out by those who dictate cultural and social desire, ignoring the norms and conventions. 

Pauline Curnier Jardin, Qu'un sang Impure, 2019

For me, the most striking in the suite of exhibitions was Studio, Wounds, and Battles. Desire is the Reiteration of Hope by British born artist Cathy de Monchaux. Doing justice to the intricacy and vastness of her work is almost impossible. Unicorns and other mythical creatures, pregnant women, bodies wrapped in what might be bandages or simple cloths, tightly wound to imprison, immersed in forests of intricately formed landscapes, a snake with skin covered in mouths that could easily be mistaken for vaginas, and the fantasies continue. Each piece is meticulously hand made from wire, paper, plaster, leather, rubber, velvet, woven, tied, wrapped and studded. The sculptures are spellbinding, and we don't know whether to be amazed, repulsed, or to recoil from their intimacies. Also included in the display of her work is a room whose walls are filled with drawings, ideas, early works from her studio. In it, we find an artist taken up with a forthright argument about women, the environment, and the entrapment of both in history, culture, and the world that we live in. It was exciting to discover de Monchaux's impressive work. 

Cathy de Monchaux, Maud's Pink, 1999

This is only a taste of what is on display at the Palais de Tokyo in Normes Corps. What a breath of fresh air to be at the Palais de Tokyo, not only to see some interesting, some brilliant, some puzzling art. The quiet and all but empty halls of the Palais de Tokyo were sheer pleasure after battling through crowds at some of the major exhibitions around town. And in spite of the relative calm, the art was filled with an energy that filled me with inspiration. It was also delightful to see so many young people in the museum, not only looking at art, but chatting, relaxing, and also enjoying the peaceful and generative atmosphere. 

Matisse, 1941-1954 Grand Palais

Henri Matisse, Spray of Leaves, 1953

I imagine that most people will be familiar with the odd Matisse painting, even if they didn't know it before going to the exhibition. It's difficult to visit an exhibition of Matisse's late work without seeing the infinitely reproduced popular art that it has become. That said, there were many surprises, including that the most reproduced were those made in his final years, works that are as interesting or radical as some of the earlier abstract painting. In addition, as a big fan of his studio paintings, as well as his use of colour to explore space and perspective, there are many reasons to brave the crowds at the Grand Palais for this exhibition.

Henri Matisse, Le lanceur de couteaux, 1943/44

Towards the beginning of the period on display at the Grand Palais' exhibition, Matisse was exploring movement, shape, music, and reaching for a  pure visual form. The colours in these paintings and throughout were gorgeous. The purples and pinks, female figures, leaves and other natural growth floating through water were also sumptuous for their expression of movement and dance. Matisse discovered these forms quite early in his career, but it took time to develop them into abstract expressions.

Henri Matisse, Interior in Yellow, 1946

As I say, it was a treat to see the interior rooms in blue, yellow, and red together in one space. The studio interiors are among the most avant-garde of Matisse's work. In them, we see black lines, and the four sides of the frame used to flatten space as well as the canvas. Ultimately, in these works, space is unsettled, difficult to perceive, making it a challenge to comprehend the spatial logic. It's interesting to think of these works in relationship to Picasso's work of the same period in which he is uses painting to tell a narrative. In a similar, but very different foreshortening and stacking of space, Matisse simply plays with perception. In many of the interior studio paintings, there is a window, open or closed, that nevertheless does not extend the space beyond the room. Windows work to put any realist space on the same plane as the represented interior. Alternatively, the windows might be paintings, and in the famous Red Studio we know this to be the case. In many of the interior spaces, there is also often a woman sitting, but she is also marginalized, even to the point where her face is behind a plant. Thus, it is not the human in the image who is important, but how bodies are organized within space.

Henri Matisse, Nus bleus, 1952

Though the colourful cut outs by nature are most familiar from reproductions, it was fascinating to be with them thanks to their sheer size and grandeur. Even a work such as The Snail and The Sheaf (1953) which is on permanent display at Tate Modern was impressive when together with other works of its size, including the stained glass windows. The final room of the exhibition gathered together silhouette cutouts in blue, including the four Blue nudes. It was a breathtaking close the exhibition. Thanks to these exquisite images, the finsal two rooms were intimate and expressed the artist's innovation. Seeing Matisse return to his lifelong interest in movement, form, and the role of the female figure in the search for purity of expression was fascinating.

Henri Matisse, Grand Visage, 1952

Lastly, also impressive was Matisse's lifelong obsession to find this pure, unencumbered form of visual expression. His journey through paint, paper cut outs, charcoals, illustrated albums, stained glass windows, in search of some kind of transcendence was fascinating. The search extended to his interest in music, the connections between jazz and painting, of course, the freedom of jazz. He is quoted as stating that he was looking for  this liberation in the lines and shapes and the expression of movement in the large works. However, it's not always easy to see the search in what can appear to be more decorative (hence their reproduction. In dots and stripes, grids and patterns, all disturbing space in the modernist paintings, the search is clearly identifiable.