Gagosian, the world’s largest art gallery, with 17 exhibition spaces across the globe, will add yet another venue to its empire. Next month, the gallery will open at 9 rue de Castiglione in Paris’s 1st arrondissement.
The space is Gagosian’s third in Paris. In a statement, the gallery’s founder, Larry Gagosian, said, “Paris is an important center for modern and contemporary art, and this space will bring a new dimension to Gagosian’s presence there, while complementing the important efforts of museums and foundations in the City of Lights.”
Opening on October 19, days before Paris’s annual FIAC art fair, the gallery’s newest location will take over the historic Hotel Lotti, which was built in 1910. (Its retrofitting was overseen architect Rémi Tessier.) The inaugural exhibition is dedicated to the work of Alexander Calder, whose monumental sculpture Flying Dragon (1975) will be installed at the nearby Place Vendôme as part of FIAC’s public artwork program “Hors les Murs.” The exhibition will present preparatory drawings and a maquette for Flying Dragon alongside other pieces from 1975.
Another Calder show will simultaneously be on view at Gagosian’s other central Paris location, which opened in 2010 in the 8th arrondissement, and another monumental sculpture will be on view at the gallery’s space in Le Bourget in Paris’s northeast suburbs: a recent weatherproof-steel piece by Richard Serra titled Transmitter (2020).
Over the past decade, Paris has seen a resurgence as an art capital, a development that was spurred on by Gagosian’s presence there. More recently, the city’s heightened art-market activity has been bolstered by uncertainty around London’s position as a center for the market in a post-Brexit Europe. Gagosian’s first Paris location is close to Avenue Matignon, which over the past few years has become home to outposts of several major galleries, including hometown ones, like Perrotin, Kamel Mennour, and Almine Rech, and international ones like Mariane Ibrahim, Galleria Continua, and Massimo De Carlo.
In a statement, Gagosian’s Paris director Serena Cattaneo Adorno said, “Rue de Castiglione—with its beautiful arcades dating from the early 1900s, and its proximity to Place Vendôme and some of the world’s most important museums—adds another unique location for artists and estates to present works locally, and deepens the gallery’s commitment to the city.”
