SOPHIE CALLE: Picalso

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the disappearance of Pablo Picasso, the Parisian museum dedicated to the painter invited Sophie Calle to take over the Hôtel Salé. Confronted with the figure of one of the masters of modern art, she chose to completely empty the museum spaces – Picasso is evicted! – in order to install her furniture and personal objects there on the upper floors. On the ground floor, she unveiled a fresco imagined in response to the famous Guernica but composed like a vast collage of works she has exchanged for years with other artists. To accompany this exhibition, titled "À toi de faire, ma mignonne," Sophie Calle has conceived a work in which she enumerates her "encounters" with Picasso. Testimonies from the guards, paintings packed during the lockdown, etc.: all stories unfolded in Sophie Calle's unique narrative art.

Designed as an artist's book with its intimate format and alternating between Bible and creative papers, "Picalso" immerses the reader in the funny, poetic, and singular universe of the artist. An essay by Yve-Alain Bois, titled "Picassiette," recontextualizes these "encounters" within Sophie Calle's work and revisits her favorite themes such as memory, absence, disappearance, and more.