Phillippe Parreno's work is all about finding new ways to question the boundaries between fact and fiction, image and reality, and new ways to challenge the conventions as to where (and how) art is presented. At Tate Liverpool, he subverts our expectations of a gallery by creating what is apparently a dead end. In fact, there is a way into a further space in which we are offered an additional experience. But what Parreno is giving us is a new twist on Pandora's box: We can hold it in our hands, we can take it home - but if we open it, what will we be left with?

[LESS]
Phillippe Parreno's work is all about finding new ways to question the boundaries between fact and fiction, image and reality, and new ways to challenge the conventions as to where (and how) art is presented. At Tate Liverpool, he subverts our expectations of a gallery by creating what is apparently a dead end. In fact, there is a way into a further space in which we are offered an additional experience. But what Parreno is giving us is a new twist on Pandora's box: We can hold it in our hands, we can take it home - but if we open it, what will we be left with?

Parreno tests the realm between the fictional and the real. In much of his work imaginary constructs are appropriated and transferred to the tangible world - he gave, for example, a 'real' life, death and even scent to the Japanese Manga character Ann Lee. This transitional path is, however, sometimes reversed, and it is information presented in the real that is called into question.
Parreno is sceptical about the role of exhibitions and their potential to articulate and convey information.


Questioning and subverting our expectations of exhibition spaces, he has animated the static architecture of the gallery. Entering the final spaces of the exhibition at Tate Liverpool, visitors reach what appears to be a dead end. On closer inspection, the shelves holding DVDs that blocked our path are found to rotate, and reveal a further display space - albeit a disrupted one. The DVDs may be taken away by the visitor; yet once removed from their sleeves they rapidly oxidise, severely limiting their functional life.


We come seeking information yet are told to go away and watch a video - an activity that soon also becomes futile. Parreno's subsequent puncturing of the space and the ideas it contains are a pithy investigation of the relationship between art and society.

Laurence Sillars

[LESS]
Parreno tests the realm between the fictional and the real. In much of his work imaginary constructs are appropriated and transferred to the tangible world - he gave, for example, a 'real' life, death and even scent to the Japanese Manga character Ann Lee. This transitional path is, however, sometimes reversed, and it is information presented in the real that is called into question.
Parreno is sceptical about the role of exhibitions and their potential to articulate and convey information.


Questioning and subverting our expectations of exhibition spaces, he has animated the static architecture of the gallery. Entering the final spaces of the exhibition at Tate Liverpool, visitors reach what appears to be a dead end. On closer inspection, the shelves holding DVDs that blocked our path are found to rotate, and reveal a further display space - albeit a disrupted one. The DVDs may be taken away by the visitor; yet once removed from their sleeves they rapidly oxidise, severely limiting their functional life.


We come seeking information yet are told to go away and watch a video - an activity that soon also becomes futile. Parreno's subsequent puncturing of the space and the ideas it contains are a pithy investigation of the relationship between art and society.

Laurence Sillars