,
Tate Modern,
London 2016. Parreno has used his specific conception of exhibitions in his 2013 exhibition
Anywhere, Anywhere Out Of The World where he radically transformed the monumental space of the
Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Parreno turned the building itself into a living constantly evolving organism using sound, image and performance to guide the visitor on a journey through his works, both old and new. The exhibition was orchestrated along the lines of a dramatic composition where the spectral presence of objects, music, lights, and films guide and manipulated the visitor's experience transforming this monologue into a polyphony. In
Dancing around the Bride in 2012 at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art curated by Carlos Basualdo in collaboration with Erica F. Battle, Parreno acted as a metteur-en-scène (orchestrator), using the artworks of
John Cage,
Merce Cunningham,
Jasper Johns,
Robert Rauschenberg, and
Marcel Duchamp to invoke time and motion. Sound was a key element in the 2013 exhibition,
The Bride and The Bachelors, at the
Barbican, London. The varied sequence of Parreno's subtle orchestration of live and pre-recorded sound from the works of Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg and Duchamp was arranged in concert with live dance performances, enabling the exhibition to change over time. During
Art Basel, 2012, Parreno presented two major new works at
Fondation Beyeler –
Marilyn (2012) and
C.H.Z. (Continuously Habitable Zones) (2011).
Marilyn was subsequently shown at Parreno's first solo exhibition in Russia at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow and at the 55th
Venice Biennale at François Pinault's museum,
Palazzo Grassi.
H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS, Parreno's first major U.S. exhibition, ran from June until August 2015 within the monumental interior of
Park Avenue Armory's Wade Thompson Drill Hall, New York and transformed the traditional exhibition experience through an interplay of film, sculpture, and the spectral presence of sound and light. Shortly after, in October 2015 until February 2016, Parreno presented
Hypothesis, at HangarBicocca in Milan, his first survey exhibition in Italy. The show, curated by Andrea Lissoni, was inhabited by a series of key pieces together with recent works and music according to a mise en scène devised by Parreno. In October 2016 [until April 2017] Parreno undertook the Hyundai Commission for the Turbine Hall at London's
Tate Modern. Entitled
Anywhen, it was the second annual Hyundai Commission, a series of site-specific works created for the
Turbine Hall by known international artists. In 2017 from 2 February - 7 May, Parreno exhibited
A Time Coloured Space at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto. Taking over the entire museum, it featured some of Parreno's most well-known works, along with new works. In 2022 Parreno exhibited
La Quinta del Sordo (2021) at Museo del Prado in Madrid, next to the room that houses Francisco Goya's '
Black Paintings'. The forty-minute audiovisual work uses advanced technology to recreate the ambience of Goya's house, known as the
Quinta del Sordo, based on a 3D computer model Parreno created of the architecture. In 2024, Parreno was appointed artistic director of the Okayama Art Summit 2025, a large international contemporary art exhibition held every three years in the Japanese city of
Okayama.
Selected key works • Anywhen (film), 2016 • Li Yan (film), 2016 • The Crowd (film), 2015
Collections His work is included in the collections of many institutions such as the
Centre Georges Pompidou, France;
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; the
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the
Walker Art Center (USA);
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA; the
Guggenheim Museum New York, USA; and
Tate Modern, London. == Selected solo exhibitions ==