Drawing Now Paris: The Salon du Dessin Contemporain at the Carrousel du Louvre

“After having invited Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr and then Catherine Millet – an auctioneer and a writer/founder of a trendsetting magazine respectively – to unveil their “imaginary museums,” we felt that we now had to look to public institutions. We chose to solicit Jean de Loisy for two major reasons. The first is that of a certain amicable and generational complicity with one of the most enterprising actors on the national and international art scene; the second is his recent appointment to the position of President of Palais de Tokyo.

“Jean de Loisy ranks among the leading figures of contemporary art, to which he has brought a vital energy for the last thirty years. He has directed important organizations such as the FRAC des Pays de la Loire, the Fondation Cartier, and the Musée des Beaux-arts de Nîmes, and has organized prestigious exhibitions such as Gasiorowski and Traces du Sacré at the Centre Pompidou, Beauty in Avignon, and Masters of Chaos at the Musée du Quai Branly. His passion for art and his involvement with artists are known and recognized, which is why we asked him to accept our invitation.

“He did so immediately, proposing to do things somewhat differently than had been the case for the first two editions of this “Imaginary Museum.” Namely, he proposed to conduct the event under the aegis of Palais de Tokyo so as to showcase the site, its dynamic, and the team behind it all. What form will it take? That of an exhibition, of course – but not a conventional one, rather one that will bring drawing out of the gallery and into the open air.”

Philippe Piguet, Artistic Director of DRAWING NOW PARIS

The Strange Conjunctures of Chance…

“Considered the most immediate expression of the spirit, drawing seems to derive a part of its prestige from this intimacy with thought, of which it is simply a visible extension. The trace of a finger in soft clay, a charcoal sketch on a rock, a carving in wood or in bone, an Inuit form tied up by a loose string, a shadow captured by Butades’ daughter, a doodle sketched in weariness during a lecture, or graffiti sprayed on a subway train – drawing makes use of all means to express our being.

“But the world also draws without us. Tangled branches, wrinkles on a face, worm tracks in the wood of our old furniture – everything becomes a sign, immediately transporting us into Novalis’ visions: ‘figures which seem to belong to that great cipher-writing which one meets with everywhere, in wings, eggshells, clouds and snow, in crystals and in stone formations, on ice-covered waters, on the inside and outside of mountains, of plants, beasts and men, in the lights of heaven, on scored disks of pitch or glass or in iron filings round a magnet, and in strange conjunctures of chance.’

“The environment has many ways of creating its design in a spectator’s distracted daydream. Invited to formulate its Imaginary Museum of drawing, Palais de Tokyo aims to take this opportunity to reveal how the artists whose creations it supports and who are attentive to these conjunctures of chance participate in the world’s great game of drawing. With works by Davide Balula, Hicham Berrada, Marc Couturier, Sai Hua Kuan, Runo Lagomarsino, Rainier Lericolais, Patrick Neu, Karin Sander and others…

Jean de Loisy & Katell Jaffrès, Palais de Tokyo