Thea, Ethan, Suzanne and Ashley arrived before the masses to attend the opening of Philippe Parreno’s exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler. Parreno is the youngest artist to receive a solo show at the foundation, and the exhibition more than deserved that distinction. He is also the first artist to create all new, commissioned work for the Beyeler. The exhibition included two projects, each of which was a film accompanied by suites of drawings. The entryway to each film was adorned with Parreno’s Marquees, now an icon of his practice. The first film was C.H.Z. (Continuously Habitable Zones), which he filmed in Portugal, and he also premiered Marilyn, which was filmed in Brooklyn, NY.

For both films, Philippe assembled a highly professional creative team, which included the musician Arto Lindsay and the cinematographer Darius Khondji, among others. The films were haunting, beautiful, ghostly, and touching beyond description. Remarkably, the accompanying suite of drawings also conveys much of what is experienced in the films. As with many of his installations, Parreno adds an unexpected and often exterior element, often overlooked but central to the exhibition’s conceptual frame. In this case, several motors in the lily pond outside the Beyeler were triggered by the screening of the movies, creating a circular, bubbling formation in various spots in the pond. These were best seen from the Claude Monet room which further helped to identify the ghost-like apparition of “lilies” that Philippe created. After the screening of the films, a luncheon was further testimony of Philippe’s importance in the art community, as it was attended by artists and close friends of the artist, such as Douglas Gordon, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and  Tobias Rehberger, and was accompanied by a stirring and extolling speech by Beyeler director Sam Keller.