Philippe Starck invites the museum public to embark on a land navigation, from Paris to Paris, his home port city.
Between real and imaginary
From stopover to stopover, the “visitors-travellers-passengers” live a constantly renewed experience within an original scenography designed with Philippe Starck. The journey is unique, surprising, oscillating between real and imaginary. “Paris is pataphysical. » is an itinerary that travels between public spaces and tourist sites (the Eiffel Tower, the Saint-Martin canal, the Parc de la Villette), places of power (Palais de l’Élysée), and spaces of sociability (the nightclub des Bains-Douches, the Caffè Stern restaurant, etc.) with recourse to imaginary and offbeat explanations of pataphysics, which designates the science of imaginary solutions.
A place of inspiration
Each stopover transfigures a universal story. The observation of the elements (wind, water, flows and energies…), of dreams and/or nightmares, of the solitude of power, of festive paroxysms, of the strangeness of beauty… transports the public in unique intensity variations.
In his youth, Philippe Starck, fleeing school, hid in the parks and under the porte-cocheres of Paris. One of them was that of the Carnavalet museum where he entered and found inspiration for some of his drawings. Paris has always been, for this visionary creator of international renown, the setting for many creations: interior and exterior architecture, nightlife, restaurants, hotels, museums, places of culture, public transport and train station, shops as well as numerous everyday objects to render service and/or tribute to Paris and Parisians such as street furniture, the photo booth or even the Olympic medal.
A unique exhibition
For this unique exhibition at the museum, Philippe Starck explores two kinds of mysteries : those that Paris conceals and those that he, intentionally or not, has hidden and continues to hide in his Parisian creations. It is therefore a poem exhibition made up of the wonders and mysteries of Paris. And it is as Regent of the College of Pataphysics that Philippe Starck thus guides a phantasmagorical visit.
