Twelve new monumental artistic creations designed in tandem by artists and architects including JR, Daniel Buren and Sophie Calle, were revealed on Monday for the 68 stations of the new Grand Paris Express metro, by the Société du Grand Paris (SGP).
These new permanent works of art in stations, which will welcome two to three million users daily, will be inaugurated gradually from 2024, the year of the Olympic Games in France, and until 2030, specified the SGP, responsible for of project management, in a press release. Among these tandems, the artist Sophie Calle, who depicts in her works the vestiges of the past, will integrate, in duo with the architect Eric Puzenat, missing objects linked to the world of the metro (punching machine, telephone booth, bench …) at Massy Opéra station in six alcoves along the platforms. For the Charles de Gaulle T2 airport station, the artist Kapwani Kiwanga, Canadian of Tanzanian origin living in France, winner of the Marcel Duchamp prize in 2020, designs, in duo with the architect Daniel Jongtien, golden metal curtains , evoking the sun, with aerial geometric shapes, suspended from footbridges in the void.
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Venus inspired by the first representations of women in the Paleolithic for the Saint-Denis Pleyel station (Prune Noury/Kengo Kuma), ribbed vaulted ceiling for Thiais-Orly (Lyes Hammadouche/Denis Valode) or sandstone tiles with bright and contrasting colors for the Chevilly-Larue station (Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger/Jérôme Brunet) are among the twelve new projects revealed on Monday. Eleven first projects were presented in February 2022. In total, around thirty architects and 41 contemporary artists must work on the creation of the 68 future automatic metro stations. The Société Grand Paris devotes “one thousandth of its budget to artistic commissions, or 35 million euros out of a total budget of 35 billion euros, to which will be added private funds from patrons,” according to the SGP. The artistic director of the entire project is José Manuel Gonçalves, director of the Centquatre center.
Launched at the end of the 2000s, the Grand Paris Express is intended to connect dozens of suburban communities, the research centers of the Saclay plateau and the two Parisian airports of Roissy to the north and Orly to the south over more than 200 km. .