“It's a place of transition”
Nouvel's renovation was carried out at a breakneck pace over the summer, to be ready in time for the FIAC fair.
“It's clearly a smart idea,” the Pritzker-prize winning architect told AFP of the gallery's move. “If you look at all the foreign visitors to the FIAC, there's no doubt a lot of them will pass through here.””We found this place that was raw, 150 metres from a landing strip, and we worked to develop its character,” he said, sanding back ceiling vaults to bare concrete, and emphasising its cathedral windows.
But the space, he said, is designed essentially as a shell for each artist to take over.
“Anselm Kiefer didn't change the walls, he created a structure in the centre of the space, but he could have painted the walls pink, or covered them in stars - it's a place where anything goes.”Known for his taste for the monumental - including a series of large-scale lead sculpture airplanes created in the 1980s and early 1990s - Kiefer was a natural choice for the gallery.
The 67-year-old artist, whose own studio in the Paris region lies beneath a flight path, sees a form of poetry in airports.
“It's a fascination, yes. People come, people go. It's a place of transition.
“When I arrived in Paris I wanted to buy a hangar in Le Bourget. But I'm an artist, it was too expensive!” he quipped to AFP.
Kiefer named his inaugural work for the gallery “Morgenthau Plan”, after an abortive US scheme hatched during World War II that aimed to turn Germany into an agrarian society.
“I wanted to show the danger of transforming a nation brutally into another state,” he explained.
Why this particular theme? “Well it was for an American gallery, and the Morgenthau plan was American,” he offered. “I like the Morgenthau plan because it didn't happen. I like all these ideas that don't happen.”The Bourget gallery is to host three to four exhibits per year, with a focus on monumental works.
Despres expects the market for giant-scale works to grow in coming years, fed by demand from new museums in emerging markets, notably China, and philanthropic buyers who donate art to them.
As a cherry on the cake, Le Bourget also has a symbolic resonance for an American gallery, Despres said, as the place Charles Lindbergh landed after completing his first solitary trans-Atlantic flight in 1927.
