{"id":1266,"date":"2026-03-31T23:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T23:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/1266\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T23:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T23:57:07","slug":"paola-pivis-lemon-tree-stars-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/1266\/","title":{"rendered":"PAOLA PIVI’S LEMON TREE STARS IN PARIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By MATTHEW MCPHILLIPS March 31st, 2026<\/p>\n

Overcome by the smell of lemon trees, one might imagine Paola Pivi\u2019s newest installation New Life, in her solo exhibition Live Again at Perrotin Paris<\/a>, transports us to an orchard, but it is something more radical, an eruption of joy. Instead we are confronted by over fifty lemon tree stars, each delicately composed of live branches assembled together at a single node. Forming a constellation across the gallery floor, the stars almost appear to move, transporting us to a new reality. But to understand why joy feels radical here, you have to start at the beginning of the show.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Views of Paola Pivi’s exhibition ‘Live again’ at Perrotin Paris, 2026. Photo: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin<\/p>\n

As we walk into the gallery space, we are met with direct yet colorful messages INTERNATIONAL LAW, FREE PEOPLE, POST POST POST COLONIALISM, and many small silk embroideries exhibited for the first time. Inducing the anxieties of our present, these same words when considered twice rouse one to dream of a peaceful future. GALLOPING TO FASCISM can be read as we are headed toward a political extreme or as if we are racing to overcome it. GOD LET ME HUNT could be misplaced as a divine right to pursue conquest or a prayer to find a passion. Many are direct anti-war statements: WHY ARE WE KILLING EACH OTHER, TARGETING JOURNALISTS IS UNACCEPTABLE, and KILLING HUMAN CHILDREN IS WRONG that are as impactful as Jenny Holzer\u2019s 1982 activation in Times Square Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise. <\/p>\n

Pivi first developed this font in 2005 with her work PLEASE DON\u2019T GET A DIVORCE, inspired by the performance art punk band Japanther. She used this in the 2008 work FREE TIBET presented at Jeffrey Deitch in New York City, then didn\u2019t use it until she felt compelled to produce new sentences that touched on our present moment. In the gallery\u2019s center is a beacon of hope, a small scale replica of Pivi\u2019s 20-meter I am happy with the ladder originally presented at the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale in Japan in 2015 and lately on the fa\u00e7ade of the Grand Palais in 2025, proof that we can dream big and overcome. This accumulated weight of the world paired with the possibility of transcending it follows us into the next room.<\/p>\n

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\"\"\/Views of Paola Pivi’s exhibition ‘Live again’ at Perrotin Paris, 2026. Photo: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin<\/p>\n

Then, the world opens up: live lemon tree branches assembled into stars, a surrealist impossibility made real. (Extra care was taken to ensure the branches were cut so each one of the roots can regrow into new plants at the end of the exhibition). As we walk the path between the stars, we become one with this natural universe, taking in the scent and the subtle rustle of the leaves as we pass by. Some branches retained their fruits and\/or blossoms, life that slowly decays through the course of the exhibition that will renew once replanted. In the final room of New Life, Pivi developed one of the lemon tree stars in bronze. This sculpture is remarkably light, and as visitors move around the space, it produces a soft sound between its metal leaves and branches, a mechanical rustle in the wind. It stands as a quietly radical rethinking of bronze\u2019s possibilities.<\/p>\n

The idea behind the installation first occurred to Pivi in 1999, when the artist was in her late twenties. She had just completed Untitled (airplane), her landmark installation of an overturned Fiat G-91 Italian fighter jet at the Venice Biennale. For many years thereafter, Pivi dreamed of trees as stars, and only recently, after she learned how to work with bronze during her New York City Highline commission You know who I am, realized she could finally bring these forms to life. Taking over two years of extreme passion to realize, Pivi worked in close collaboration with the mathematician and foundry specialist Adele Bonetto of Fonderia De Carli in Torino, whose precision was essential to realising the work\u2019s ambition. As the gallery notes: \u201cBonetto developed a highly precise casting and hand-attachment process to achieve an extremely realistic reproduction\u2014effectively a faithful scan-like translation of the tree into bronze, without the expected heaviness of the material.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"\/Views of Paola Pivi’s exhibition ‘Live again’ at Perrotin Paris, 2026. Photo: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin
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Nevertheless, other artists across history have created universes from multiples. Yayoi Kusama gave us Narcissus Garden (1966) with hundreds of mirrored spheres that originally sold us our own vanity and now unify us with nature. Maren Hassinger developed 32 wire bundles in Leaning (1980), a visual field of collective movement, having a quality of branches or our bodies swaying in the wind. And Vija Celmins produced casts of rocks she picked up on her walks that resembled constellations in To Fix the Image in Memory (1977-82), meticulously painting each cast to match its original duplicate. Where these artists turn inward toward contemplation, Pivi turns outward: her lemon tree stars burst with the possibility of new life, one we are invited to imagine for ourselves. It\u2019s a critical gesture in our current world, and recalls an important lesson from an anti-war film by Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020).<\/p>\n

In Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012), director Nobuhiko Obayashi offers a profound reflection on Nagaoka, a Japanese city devastated during World War II and now known for its annual fireworks festival which began in 1946 as a gesture to mourn the victims of the August 1, 1945 air raid on the city. The film follows the journalist Reiko Endo interested in reporting on the city\u2019s history in the aftermath of three earthquakes that shook the city. In the process of talking to the locals, she learns of the WWII bombing and helps a student realize their play bringing residents together to share collective experiences of survival. The journalist learns that each year at the exact time of the 1945 attack, the Fireworks Festival launches a single casing, cascading a white chrysthanthemum across the sky as a prayer of peace. In its most prescient moment, the film offers a thought by the Japanese artist Kiyoshi Yamashita (1922-1971) that feels written for our present moment: \u201cIf everyone made only beautiful fireworks and not bombs, I think the war would never have happened.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"\/Views of Paola Pivi’s exhibition ‘Live again’ at Perrotin Paris, 2026. Photo: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin<\/p>\n

It is a lesson Pivi seems to have absorbed entirely. In conversation, she reflects: \u201cI was able to do this first room where you are confronted with all these sentences. And for me it was just a way to survive in today\u2019s world.\u201d In the last room, beyond the sentences and the stars, two series hang in stasis. A single all white work from the artist\u2019s ongoing hanging pearls series is flanked by two new works commissioned by the Triennale on terrorist attacks in Italy, burst balloons held by iron rings to paper, one facing out to the room and one inward to the wall. <\/p>\n

Perhaps this is the lesson behind Pivi\u2019s gestures. The urgent sentences and impossible stars ask how we might survive the present, while the pearls and burst balloons register the exhaustion of bearing witness. The first room shows us what we are losing, New Life reveals what remains worth fighting for, and the final works warn what we risk becoming if we fail to act. Pivi\u2019s exhibition teaches us to live again, and a renewed joy in coming together spiritually and politically in celebration of our shared humanity.<\/p>\n

Paola Pivi: Live Again is the artist\u2019s grand return to Perrotin Paris in over a decade, and is on view through April 18, 2026.<\/p>\n

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