Gregor Hildebrandt — Der Tag ergänzt sich in der Nacht — Almine Rech Gallery, Matignon — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 15 → May 27, 2023

I always dreamed of entering Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” That is, entering Roger Waters’ brain, like squatting in a trashed apartment that’s too big for me. I remember when this double album came out, there was incredible excitement, which was intensified by Alan Parker’s film. This musical novel was the first time I understood what the London Blitz was like (September 1940-May 1941). I think it’s useful that a great German artist explores the madness of bombing a foreign country, at the exact time when the same thing is starting again in Ukraine. What is destroyed is never really destroyed. Bombings are transformed into memories, which themselves trace reconstruction, the hope for a new world. This absurdity (art) is our only chance to keep on living.

Gregor Hildebrandt, vue de l’exposition Der Tag ergänzt sich in der Nacht, 2023, galerie Almine Rech, Matignon Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Almine Rech, Matignon, Paris

I’d like to thank Gregor Hildebrandt and Almine Rech for making this experience possible. They’ve made miracles happen. Pink Floyd have broken up but I suspect that Gregor wanted to add another brick in the wall: his forms produced with recordings, like a backwards archeologist. Instead of digging through the ruins, he created his own. What is art, if not a way of recycling ruins to make new ones? I myself will recycle a phrase by Françoise Sagan: “I wonder what the past has in store for me.” Meanwhile, I hope that at the opening, there will be lots of alcohol so we can feel “comfortably numb” and I’m almost positive that Gregor will show up shouting “Is there anybody out there?”

— Frédéric Beigbeder

Gregor Hildebrandt, vue de l’exposition Der Tag ergänzt sich in der Nacht, 2023, galerie Almine Rech, Matignon Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Almine Rech, Matignon, Paris

For his first exhibition at Almine Rech Matignon — his 8th with the gallery since 2007 — Gregor Hildebrandt will transform the entire gallery into an immersive installation. Inspired by the cover of British band Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall, the artist will cover the walls of the ground floor galleries with black and white brick-like vinyl record tiles. Reactivating the black and white symmetry at the core of his signature “Rip-off” paintings, combined with his avid interest in chess, Hildebrandt will transport viewers into a poetic universe bound by oppositions and complementarities, discordances and harmonies. Comprising the artist’s main series of works, the artworks presented throughout the gallery follow Hildebrandt’s metaphorical exploration of day and night and derive from one theme to another through a series of associations.