This review brings together three, seemingly very distinct exhibitions, that are nevertheless somehow related. Not only because they all are situated in Paris, but more importantly, due to their subject matter around the notion of visibility.

Situated opposite the Centre Pompidou in Paris sits the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles. Behind its far more modest façade, this art centre frequently harbours real treasures, organised under the dynamic leadership of its flamboyant director Stéphanie Pécourt. Deep Fields is one of those treasures, alluding with its title to the notion of deep space that was first detected by the Hubble Telescope in 1995 and has since lead to “the discovery of the first exoplanet, the Higgs boson, gravitational waves and the first picture of a black hole.” As stated by the curators, Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves and Olivier Schefer, the selected artists all explore this deep space in their specific way, questioning perception, that is “constantly referred back to its own limits, frameworks and boundaries”. With its investigation of “the margins of the visible, encouraging us to step outside the spaces of control”, the exhibition is an invitation for some inspirational space travel throughout the centre’s exhibitions spaces and beyond.

With contributions of more than 22 international artists, ranging from installations, sculptures to films and performances, perception and visibility are questioned by the half spherical Corps noir (Black corps, 1994) by Ann Veronica Jansens that works as a camera obscura, or the video Discreet Piece (1997) by Edith Dekyndt, in which light makes dust particles visible. A lot less discreet is Evan Roth’s installation Landscapes (2016-2020), comprising of a series of bright red panoramic videos, with an otherworldly feel due to the use of an infrared camera. Filming various anchor points of submarine fibre optic cables throughout the world over four years, he has captured a range of frequencies similar to the wavelengths used to transmit the mobile date through the cables and turning them visible.

Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand’s impressive installation ER=EPR (2017) consists of two whirlpools spinning in opposite directions in a large water tank. By illuminating these from the bottom, black holes surrounded by a halo and connected by a wormhole are drawn onto the ceiling. The title of the installation refers to combining two papers on respectively the existence of Einstein-Rosen (ER) bridges or wormholes and the EPR or Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox on “spooky action at a distance” or quantum entanglement, combining speculation and fundament.

Making the unseen visible lies also at the basis Joost Rekveld’s interactive Installation #71.1, an early example of the artist’s research into early electronic technologies which is used outside of its original context to display invisible phenomena on a screen. Similarly, as a different example of the range of work that’s included in the exhibition, Semiconductor’s video 20Hz (2011) makes the sound and phenomena of a geomagnetic storm in the Earth’s upper atmosphere tangible in an enticing way.

The reconstruction by filmmaker Wes Anderson and curator Jasper Sharp of Joseph Cornell’s former studio at the Gagosian gallery, titled The House on Utopia Parkway, seems at first totally unrelated to Deep Space. As an ardent fan of Cornell’s work, I once went on a pilgrimage to this house situated in Queens, NY. I couldn’t enter but was nevertheless pleased to have come close to where Cornell produced his enigmatic collage boxes in the cellar of the house where he lived with his mother and brother. Situated at the rue de Castiglione in the first arrondissement or district, close to the Place Vendôme with its luxurious shops, and the Louvre, The House on Utopia Parkway couldn’t be in starker contrast to its original location. Not being allowed to enter the studio once again seems the only aspect that connects the original studio and its remake as one can only observe the space from outside through the shop windows. The formerly invisible has nevertheless been made visible through the jewel box quality sought after by Anderson and Sharp, connecting this recreation in another way to its Parisian location.

Although Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) never left the United States, Paris played an important role for him through postcards, guidebooks, and conversations with his friend Marcel Duchamp. The unseen capital led him to visualise it in several of his artworks, dedicated “to its poets, palaces, and historical protagonists”. His basement studio, what he referred to as his “spare parts department”, at 37-08 Utopia Parkway, Queens, was “lined with shelves of whitewashed shoeboxes and tins filled with objects gathered during Cornell’s forays through Manhattan bookstores, antique shops, and neighbourhood dime stores”. With the painstakingly precise reconstruction of the studio, based on black and white photos, and with the help of longtime collaborators such as the designer Cécile Degos, who excels in making things fake, Anderson and Sharp intended to create a part time capsule, part shadow box, even pretending to turn the gallery space into a life-size Cornell collage box. The result is bizarrely sterile, just as often is the case with reconstructions of artists’ studios, sprinkled in this case with some of Cornell’s shadow boxes, that are probably eying to be bought. In a video interview Anderson, Sharp and their collaborators are seen constructing the space, adding a lively aspect to it, but as a visitor one is unfortunately literally left out in the cold, having to content herself with observing a nevertheless alluring and intriguing shop window display. Cornell’s studio was in reality far from sterile and closed off. As Sarah Lea points out in her fascinating article to the winter issue of the Gagosian Quarterly, it was not only visited by Duchamp, but also regularly by the likes of Lee Miller, Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst, or in the sixties by Susan Sontag.

Finally, there’s the exhibition of Roger Caillois’ collection of minerals in the École des Arts Joailliers in partnership with the Museum of Natural History, situated close to the Musée Grévin. Caillois (1913-1978), who was a writer, sociologist and literary critic, as well as a translator of Borges, was associated with the later phase of surrealism, and collected minerals for more than 25 years with “an insatiable curiosity, scientific rigour, and abundant imagination”. The minerals, that are indeed fascinating, are displayed like jewels of the highest order.

Although Caillois is well-known for his book Man, Play, and Games (1961) in which he builds on the legacy of Johan Huizinga, his collection of minerals led him to write a series of essays, published as L’Écriture des pierres in 1970 which became his most famous work. Caillois’ minerals came from all over the world and range from vibrantly coloured ones to those that seem to depict landscapes. They indeed invite to a close observation and thus lead to yet another exploration of deep spaces, or in fact leading into deep space, to the enigmatic origins of Planet Earth and making these in turn visible in a jewel-like quality that relates back to Cornell’s work and exhibit.

Notes

[1] https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2025/10/20/essay-joseph-cornell-the-house-on-utopiaparkway/.

[2] Translated as The Writing of Stones, published in 1985 with an introduction by Marguerite Yourcenar.