Hiroshi Sugimoto at the Palace of Versailles, the contemporary art exhibition 2018

For its new contemporary exhibition, the Château de Versailles welcomes Hiroshi Sugimoto. This Japanese artist, a specialist in black-and-white long-posed photos and author of architectural structures invests the gardens of the Trianon estate, from October 16, 2018 to January 20, 2019.

The Château de Versailles invites Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto to its major contemporary art exhibition, from October 16, 2018 to January 20, 2019. This year, the contemporary exhibition does not take place in the Gardens of the Château de Versailles but moves to the Trianon estate, a more intimate location ideal for the dialogue between the artist's works and Versailles.

This is the first time a photographer has set up shop in Versailles. It seemed unquestionable that a photographer could embody modernity, in the year of Louis-Philippe 's gigantic exhibition that was to transform the residence of kings into a museum showing the world the rebounds of French history.

Did you know that Louis-Philippe wanted to recreate Versailles through a picture book at the very moment when photography and a new historical narrative were being born? As you know, 2018 marks the 160th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Japan. This exhibition is an original marriage between the two cultures, with the teahouse and its hidden factories echoing the place where Marie-Antoinette liked to isolate herself from the noise of the Court.

This exhibition takes place in different areas of the Domaine de Trianon. The Petit Trianon, the Belvédère, the Théâtre de la Reine, the Pavillon Français, the Bassin du Plat-Fond and the Grand Trianon become the setting for the master's fictional characters and contemporary works.

In this exhibition, Hiroshi Sugimoto restores, in his own way, the shadows of the characters who haunted these places. To do this, he uses photographs of wax mannequins. After an eye-opening visit to London's Tussauds Museum in 1994, the artist has since photographed the world's tyrants, rulers, powers-that-be and artists in immortalized form.

In addition to the photograph of the wax mannequin of Louis XIV preserved at the Château or that of Marie-Antoinette played by Norma Shierer, Hiroshi Sugimoto has chosen to install figures who have come to Versailles, such as Salvador Dali, Fidel Castro and Queen Victoria.

But the artist doesn't stop at photography. He diversifies his art by tackling architecture. In Versailles, the artist reinstalled theMondrian Tea House shown in Venice as part of the Architecture Biennale. It takes its place in the center of the Bassin du Plat-Fond, in the perspective of the Grand Trianon. Modernism and tradition come together in this work.