Hauser & Wirth‘s new Paris location will open on 14th October 2023 during the lead-in to Paris+ par Art Basel.
Hauser & Wirth’s inaugural exhibition in Paris will debut new works by critically acclaimed Los Angeles artist Henry Taylor, whose major career survey arrives at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on 4th October 2023 and will remain on view through January 2024
Occupying an entire neo-classical hôtel particulier dating from 1877, Hauser & Wirth’s Paris address, 26 bis rue François 1er, is situated on the right bank of the River Seine, close to the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement.
Henry Taylor’s exhibition will comprise a wide range of works encompassing the remarkable breadth of his practice, from painting to sculpture to installation. Throughout his four-decade career, Taylor has simultaneously embraced and rejected the tenets of traditional painting, creating a visual language unique to his practice that defies categorization. The artist’s vast body of highly personal work is rooted in his encounters with and perceptions of the individuals and communities closest to him, often framed with poignant or pointed historical and contemporary cultural references. In preparation for his October exhibition, Taylor will extend his studio practice to Paris for a residency in the city during the months of June and July.
Séverine Waelchli, based in Paris since 2005, will join Hauser & Wirth as Senior Director, France with oversight of the new gallery in Paris. In addition, she will have oversight of Hauser & Wirth’s presence and gallery in Monaco, which opened in 2021. Following a Masters in art history at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Waelchli began her career at Sprüth Magers Gallery. She went on to head up the Paris office before taking on senior roles at Yvon Lambert Gallery and most recently at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery.
Marc Payot, President, said,
The opening of our Paris gallery is the realization of a long-held dream, one we’ve shared with our artists since the founding of Hauser & Wirth thirty years ago. For centuries Paris has fostered cultural ferment and breakthroughs, placing down a welcome mat for creators of every stripe from around the world. The city has supplied so much inspiration to our artists—from those like Louise Bourgeois and Pierre Huyghe who were born there, to those who arrived from elsewhere like Takesada Matsutani, Alina Szapocznikow and Ed Clark, among others—that their careers would be unimaginable without it. Paris is home to a uniquely sophisticated public, an incredible concentration of outstanding museums, and a community of ambitious, astute collectors and patrons. Together, they offer the ideal audience for a rigorous and conceptual program like ours. It’s a thrill and an honor for Hauser & Wirth to inaugurate a beautiful new space in this context. We are excited to become an active participant in Paris and to contribute to this vibrant city we love so much.
About the Paris Location
Hauser & Wirth’s gallery in Paris at 26 bis rue François 1er extends over 800 square meters and four floors of a neo-classical hôtel particulier that formerly housed La Maison Decour, a decorative arts gallery, until the 1940s. The conversion of this site by Paris-based architecture studio Laplace, a longstanding collaborator of the gallery, continues Hauser & Wirth’s longstanding commitment to the adaptive conservation of historic buildings, hereby reinstating the double-height, six-meter-tall ground floor gallery and authentic elements of the space, including the spiral staircase and its original handrail. The walls of this staircase will feature a specially commissioned site-specific installation by artist Martin Creed.
Materials sourced locally in France, including the distinctive Croix Huyart stone to be used for the entranceway of the gallery, and used in the construction of most historical buildings in Paris, have been selected to reflect and amplify the building’s historical luster. The principal story of the façade has neoclassical detailing, including a series of three four-meter-tall arched windows and banded rustication, and the upper stories have Corinthian pilasters, balconies and scrolls with a balustraded terrace above.
