TARO NASU is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of Philippe Parreno, opening on October 30.

Born in 1964, Philippe Parreno has consistently created experiences that transcend the limits of human perception, working across a wide range of media, including film, installation, sculpture, painting, photography, sound, and text. Since the 1990s, Parreno has established a prominent presence on the international art scene and has emerged as one of the key figures exploring new possibilities for conceptual art. His approach to the exhibition itself as a medium—conceiving of it as an organic, living entity that evolves over time—is regarded as an attempt to expand the horizons of contemporary art.

In recent years, Parreno has attracted further attention for his work involving non-human life forms, his artistic practice that seeks to incorporate the audience as an integral element of the work, and his ventures into the realm of commercial cinema. In Japan, his recent activities include the solo exhibition Places and Spaces at the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone in 2024 and his role as Artistic Director of the Okayama Art Summit 2025, The Parks of Aomame.

This exhibition will feature works from Parreno’s iconic Marquee series—illuminated sculptural forms resembling signs—alongside works from his Happy Ending series, which also take the form of illuminated sculptures. Together, these works will shape the exhibition space through light, a central motif in Parreno’s artistic practice. Another highlight of the exhibition is a sculpture in the form of a Christmas tree. Endowed with a special meaning and function during the Christmas season, the tree continues to shine in vain throughout the rest of the year. Its presence encompasses themes that Parreno has frequently explored—the instability of identity, time, and light—while challenging established conventions.

For Parreno, an exhibition is not simply a collection of individual works. Rather, it is a spatial apparatus that conjures a phantasmagoria, a form of narrative and experience that unfolds intermittently at the intersection of time and space. At times assuming the roles of scriptwriter, editor, and conductor, Parreno himself intervenes in this process, orchestrating and witnessing the shifting boundaries between the viewer’s perception and reality.

Philippe Parreno
Born in France in 1964, Philippe Parreno was raised in Grenoble and has lived and worked in Paris since the early 1990s. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble, from 1983 to 1988 and at the Institut des Hautes Etudes en arts plastiques at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, from 1988 to 1989.
For over three decades, Parreno’s contribution to contemporary art has been recognised through major international exhibitions, awards and commissions. In 2013, Parreno was invited to exhibit across the entire Palais de Tokyo building in Paris, becoming the first artist in the institution’s history to do so. In 2015, the exhibition H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS saw him transform the 5,000 square metres of New York’s Park Avenue Armory, at the time his largest presentation in the United States. In 2016, he received the Hyundai Commissionfor the Tate Modern’s monumental Turbine Hall in London, and in 2019, he created Echo for the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a site-specific ‘automaton’ that responds to its environment. Since 2021, his work has been on permanent exhibit across multiple spaces at LUMA Arles, France. His first feature film, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, co-directed with artist Douglas Gordon, premiered at the 59th Cannes Film Festival in 2006. He is currently completing a feature starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vicky Krieps and Zoe Saldaña.