The art system should by definition be in constant development, but in fact, rarely finds moments of true experimentation in the current polarised global world governed by the prefix mega.
Massimo De Carlo gallery, with outposts in Milan, London and Hong Kong, has demonstrated throughout the decades its restless attitude in researching alternative scenarios and brand new propositions to offer its artists new ways of expressions. By refusing to align to white-cube spaces, for example, it has inspired a number of conversations between new and old, traditional architecture and contemporary art, and so forth and it is now ready to embark in an innovative adventure.
From February 9, Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique opens in Paris with a space designed by Japanese acclaimed architect Kengo Kuma in rue de Turenne, in the upscale neighborhood of Le Marais. Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique is a new gallery concept that challenges the status quo: visible 24/7 through its glass window at street level, it will be showing only one work at the time with a restless program of fifteen to twenty exhibitions every season.
Small by choice, the aim of this revolutionary gallery is to give the artists fresher and faster occasions to show their art and to inspire a new relationship between the viewers and their work. Conceived way before the pandemic, this new project – which is a XXI Century reload of Lucio Amelio’s (the iconic Italian gallerist) Pièce Unique space that run in Paris from the end of the 80s – embraces all the issues that the global lockdown brought out including the need of rebuilding local platforms, rethinking the relationship with the audience, and also to scale down and slow down.
The gallery will stage a diverse program of single-work exhibitions, but also collective shows expanded in time (instead of space), performances, festivals, in a constant flow of innovation and excitement. “With Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique we wish to address artists with new questions and to challenge them with new possible perspectives. Never more than today we need to focus on what is really the core of what we do: art is always about ideas and rarely about scale,” Mr Massimo De Carlo commented.
The gallery opens with a brand new work by Kaari Upson, the celebrated Los Angeles based artist, titled Clay Baby (m.l.), a raw and yet sentimental homage to the matriarchal lineage that governs much of her thinking and pervades most of her sculptural work.
Bienvenue Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique!
