Day by day, Franck Scurti's studio at the Grand Palais this summer 2020

At a time when the government has called for learning vacations throughout France, the Grand Palais is playing along by inviting artist Franck Scurti to set up a summer residency in the Nave of the Grand Palais. The artist will take possession of the Grand Palais on July 6, and will welcome the general public from July 18 to August 23, 2020, on weekends only.

For Grand Palais director Chris Dercon, the choice of artist was a simple one. In a press release, he explains: "For this summer, I wanted a committed and generous work, a human project based on encounters and dialogue, but one that would be at odds with the impressive immensity of the Nave. In this way, I wanted to enable the public - all the public - to discover this empty space in a different way, and give an artist the opportunity to look at our times from a different perspective. Franck Scurti's "Au jour le jour" is exactly that: a workshop in the world after, where the materials used are recuperated from the world before, and where the silence of the work and the words of the artist follow one another in perpetual motion".

For Franck Scurti, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. In 2019, he took over the Palais de Tokyo with More is Less, a nod to Gauguin's Christ Jaune. For the Grand Palais, he will be working on De la Maison au Studio (et vice versa), a work begun in 2012. The work is made up of shoe laces tied together, and attached to detritus found on the floor. As detritus is found, this line measures over 45 m in length and will be suspended from the Nave's glass roof, and will continue to be fed by the artist.

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He explains: "By setting up my studio, by exhibiting my practice for two months in the Nave of the Grand Palais, it's a question of putting the artist's word back in the foreground and making public moments, sensations that are usually reserved solely for the private domain."

Lecturers will welcome visitors to present Franck Scurti's work in a small lounge with table and chairs. And every day, three 45-minute lecture tours are offered to individual visitors on the theme of Grand Palais and artistic creation (4.15pm, 5.30pm; 7pm). It's not clear whether queue-cutting tickets will be available, or whether access will be free and visitors will be kept at a physical distance of one metre from one another.

At the same time in Paris, La Villette will welcome artists for a Plaine d'artistes, and the Paris City Hall is launching its August Month of Culture.