From the checkpoint at the entrance to the building to the desks at the thresholds of the exhibition spaces and to the control room (which doubles up as a break room and first-aid point), in front of their CCTV screens or over the dedicated channel on their walkie-talkies, the teams that oversee the safety and security of the Palais de Tokyo welcome, grant access, observe, inspect, and listen, taking care of the works of art, the public and the employees of the art centre, day in, day out.

Over the course of the past few months, painter Lassana Sarre has spent time with these individuals, who stay alert and watchful, whose discretion is written into their contracts, and whose link to the space is particularly strong, with some of them present at the site since the art centre’s inauguration. Extending a project that he began on a voyage to the United States that was based on a confidential dialogue with the security personnel of a New York museum, Sarre has listened to and spoken, walked and waited with the teams at the Palais de Tokyo to attentively observe their lives and routines, which escape the collective gaze.

Through wall paintings and looped sound disseminated in the corridor, he has looked to capture fragments of the lives of these individuals whose quiet reserve is only a surface illusion. Around the table where they often eat lunch at unusual times, home-cooked meals are shared along with whispers, silences, moments of rest, the day’s anecdotes or talk of projects to come.

Discretely drawing on traditions of history painting, socialist realism and allegory, Sarre’s brush uses the power of art to make things appear and disappear and to shift our attention elsewhere. Infused with memories of the “Papelots” complex from his childhood in the suburb of Vitry, whose bricks and cement find their way into his colour palette, and imprinted with gestures borrowed from Bruegel and visits to the Louvre, the MAC VAL or metro tunnels, Sarre remakes sensitive stories that blend into his materials. In a grand gesture which makes works overflow from their usual frames and settings, he inscribes bodies and presences onto the walls within which they work. Through his washes, diluted paints and colourful impasto, he cooks up a soup made of patrols, footsteps and stationary watches; he replays beeps, pauses and bursts of laughter or speech; he shares the secret histories and the meals shared in the private sphere of a public sector mission: an access to art for all whose protagonists, with their professional role of observation and action, are double agents.