iJeu de PaumeTuileries
Stan Douglas: Parallax
The most significant Paris survey of Canadian artist Stan Douglas in over 30 years, spanning film, video, photography and installation that probe how history is constructed, represented and transmitted.
More in Paris
Hastings Park, 16 July 1955 is a mural-sized photograph of spectators at a Vancouver racetrack, talking, moving and smoking in 1950s costume. Douglas staged it in 2008 and composited it from 50 images shot in one session.
Parallax gathers about forty films, photo series and video installations from the late 1980s to now. Douglas restages vanished moments with actors and sets, then photographs or films them. The Crowds and Riots series recreates four Vancouver gatherings in which people oppose power. The route ends on Birth of a Nation (2025), which sets Griffith's racist 1915 film against a version Douglas scripted.
Ocula's Zian Chen would go "for Hors-Champs (1992) alone". It is the one concert in Paris where you are meant to walk round the back of the screen: an edited free-jazz set plays on one side, the musicians cut out of frame on the other. Sortiraparis's one complaint: the show is too short. Tickets are €14, €9.50 reduced, free under 18. Tuesday is the late night, open until 21:00.
Editor's pick
Douglas restages historical moments, from street riots to crowd scenes, as meticulously built photographs and films, and asks who the official record left out. Some forty works from the 1980s on: his largest Paris survey in over 30 years.
Look for
Hastings Park, 16 July 1955 (2008)
A crowd of seated racetrack spectators in 1950s dress, talking and smoking, composited from 50 photographs.
Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 (2008)
Another restaged Vancouver gathering from Crowds and Riots, built with period costume and a constructed street set.
Hors-Champs (1992)
Four American musicians living in France play free jazz, shot like 1960s French TV, with the edited broadcast on one face of a hanging screen and the out-of-frame takes on the other.
Der Sandmann (1995)
A black-and-white film projection that pans across a Babelsberg sound stage to the words of E.T.A. Hoffmann.
Birth of a Nation (2025)
The closing installation, shown in France for the first time, puts clips of D.W. Griffith's 1915 film beside a modified version Douglas scripted, about racial perception and misidentification.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want photographs on walls: much of the show is film and video installation.
With kids
Under-18s are free.
Also at Jeu de Paume
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- Stan Douglas: Parallax© Stan Douglas. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner
- Monet, Painting TimeNational Gallery of Art / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Contemporary Counterpoint: Vija CelminsVija Celmins, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
- Marie and Félix Bracquemond, Decorative Arts DrawingsMarie Bracquemond, Les muses des arts, sans date. Musée d'Orsay, Don Armel et Nicolas Jundt, 2024. © Musée d’Orsay, dist. GrandPalaisRmn
- Jeu de PaumeGuilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0
- Hôtel de la MarineParis 16 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Musée de l'OrangerieHomonihilis / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Fondation CustodiaMOSSOT / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Musée d'OrsaySuicasmo, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0