CHILDHOOD Another banana day for the dream-fish at Palais de Tokyo

Artists: Caroline Achaintre, Amabouz Taturo, Jean-Marie Appriou, David Douard, Dran, Escif, Philippe Grandrieux, Daiga Grantina, Petrit Halilaj, Anna Hulačová, Binelde Hyrcan, Takashi Kuribayashi, Sharon Lockhart, Keita Miyazaki, Yuko Mohri, Anita Molinero, Jonathan Monaghan, Chihiro Mori, Ugo Rondinone, Megan Rooney, Rachel Rose, Kiki Smith, Tomoaki Suzuki, Sabrina Vitali, Yûichi Yokoyama, Andy Warhol, Enrique López & Germain Benoît, Karen Grigorian, Aurélie Lanoiselée, Arca – Steven Leprizé, Ghislain Moret De Rocheprise, Ateliers Loire – Chartres, Mathieu Rousso, Sika Viagbo

Exhibition title: CHILDHOOD Another banana day for the dream-fish

Curated by: Sandra Adam-Couralet and Yoann Gourmel

Associated curator: Kodama Kanazawa

Dramaturge: Clément Cogitore

Scenographer: Laure Pichat

Venue: Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France

Date: June 22 – September 9, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, ©Palais de Tokyo and the respective copyright holders

Like a tale in its principle and construction, with multiple levels of interpretation, addressed at once to children and adults, with its numerous rites of passage, the exhibition invites visitors, “from 7 to 77”, to cross through a variety of initiatory trials, while confronting themselves with the strange and the stranger.

How are the sense of wonder, the capacity to invent worlds, but also childhood fears and anxieties, constructed and become determined, in different contexts? The exhibition Another banana day for the dream-fish, after the modified title of a story by J.D. Salinger, tries to provide an answer by making us travel from everyday, intimate territories to fantasy worlds, through a series of fragments of an identity in permanent construction.

The exhibition, conceived thanks to a partnership with the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller, has been devised in complicity with the artist and filmmaker Clément Cogitore. As the exhibition’s dramaturg, he has imagined a series of rooms, atmospheres and scenes in collaboration with craftsmen, invited to be genuine interpreters of the director’s intentions; the materials and their use having been chosen for the emotional power they give off. Through this collaboration, the work of craftsmen is thus once again being highlighted, uniting knowhow and creative daring.

This exhibition, conceived with the Japanese curator Kodama Kanazawa and co-organized with the Japan Foundation, is part ofJaponismes 2018, and will be an opportunity for visitors to appreciate the works of a good twenty international artists, six of them being Japanese, and to discover an original collaboration with the mangaka Yûichi Yokoyama.

Exhibition view of « Another banana day for the dream-fish », Palais de Tokyo (22.06 – 09.09.2018) Photo : Aurélien Mole

Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (Wallpaper), 2015, Wallpaper, scans of pages from the ABETARE book repeated on walls, Variable dimensions., Courtesy of the artist, kamel mennour (Paris – London) and Chert Lüdde (Berlin)

Exhibition view of « Another banana day for the dream-fish », Palais de Tokyo (22.06 – 09.09.2018) Photo : Aurélien Mole

Ugo Rondinone, Vocabulary of Solitude, 2014-2016, 40 sculptures. Polystryrene foam, epoxy resin, fabric, Variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Zurich), Gladstone Gallery (New York – Brussels), Sadie Coles HQ (London), kamel mennour (Paris – London), Esther Schipper (Berlin)