nº95 / CLÉMENT GRIMM / L’ÉCOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS / PARIS

Zoltan Alexander
3 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 6 hours ago

A promising Swiss contemporary artist, Clément Grimm, reveals his latest art installation at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, for three days only.

Review by Valéry Dardenne

THE INSTIGATOR / Clément Grimm / L'École des Beaux-Arts de Paris / photo Ronan Debosque

CLÉMENT GRIMM IN MARIENBAD blurs the line between music, sculpture, and performance

In the chapel of the Petits-Augustins of the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Clément Grimm presents his final-year project, an installation that blurs the lines between

sculpture, music and performance, fiction and materiality, visible and invisible, constructing spaces where memory, architecture and narrative meet.

Surrounded by sculptures and frescoes of the Petits-Augustins, the central work is a grand piano with its lid open, exposing the interior of the instrument. The artist pierces the piano with an immense white needle, a pointed tip that traverses the structure. This minimalist form seems to generate a paradoxical tension between gravity and poetry, just like La Nona Ora (The Pope struck down by a Meteorite) of Maurizio Cattelan; except Grimm’s installation is a much more promising contemporary structure.

THE INSTIGATOR / Clément Grimm / L'École des Beaux-Arts de Paris / photo Zoltan Alexander

PHOTO (top) /“Hôtel, Été, 1928 ou 29“ by Clément Grimm l'École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

/ Photo © Courtesy of Ronan Debosque

PHOTO (below) /“Hôtel, Été, 1928 ou 29“ by Clément Grimm l'École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

/ Photo © Courtesy of Zoltan Alexander

The piano is not just something to be admired; it plays music on its own, as if inhabited by an invisible soul. The piano diffuses a sonic memory and transforms itself in the eyes of the visitor. The autonomous, almost spectral mechanism lends the installation an atmosphere that is both fascinating and unsettling.

Grimm’s music for an automated piano: “Sonate No. 1” (in loop for 93’ 34”), composed by Antoine Poudret, and was inspired by French Nouvelle Vague psychological drama, Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais. Grimm’s installation turns out to be as mysterious and ambiguous as the film itself.

In this sacred space of the Chapel, the piano becomes a modern altar, and an alter ego of a ritual, where the object becomes the protagonist of a sonic and sculptural scenography. His works, often made from transformed industrial materials or reinterpreted ready-made pieces, invite us to explore the boundaries between the visible and the invisible, the narrative and the sculptural.

THE INSTIGATOR / Clément Grimm / L'École des Beaux-Arts de Paris / photo Valéry Dardenne

PHOTO (top) /“Hôtel, Été, 1928 ou 29“ by Clément Grimm l'École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

/ Photo © Courtesy of Zoltan Alexander

PHOTO (below) /“Hôtel, Été, 1928 ou 29“ by Clément Grimm l'École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

/ Photo © Courtesy of Valéry Dardenne

Grimm juxtaposes elements to create new contexts and frameworks for interpretation. His interventions, modest yet enigmatic, transform space and his materials into a world of exploration. He seeks to dissociate forms from their origins, allowing his works to float in unpredictable narratives where time, place, and history become blurred.

It is in this pursuit of ambiguity and transformation that the singularity of his practice resides. His works become mirrors in which our own questions are projected, suspended between absence and poetry, whilst keeping interpretation suspended between mystery and possibility.

With this installation, Clément Grimm reveals himself as a promising contemporary