Benoît Piéron at the Palais de Tokyo: an exhibition exploring themes of care, vulnerability, and imagination

The Palais de Tokyo in Paris is hosting a retrospective dedicated to contemporary artist Benoît Piéron, focusing on sculptures and installations inspired by the hospital environment. Running from April 3 to September 13, 2026, the exhibition delves into themes of care, waiting, and fragility through works that blend medical aesthetics, sensory experiences, and reflections on vulnerability as a universal condition.

Between anticipation, care, and imagination—a different perspective on the hospital... The Palais de Tokyo presents an exhibition dedicated to Benoît Piéron, bringing together sculptures, installations, and participatory environments. These works are thoughtfully designed to interact with the spaces of the contemporary art center in Paris, on view from April 3rd to September 13th, 2026. The exhibition explores themes of suspended time, waiting, and vulnerability, inspired by the artist’s personal experience of prolonged hospital stays. Through an aesthetic rooted in the worlds of healthcare and medicine, it offers a poignant journey through familiar scenarios—often associated with constraint or discomfort—but reimagined here in a poetic and contemplative light.

The exhibition explores shapes and materials drawn from hospital environments, deliberately blending ambiguity and contrast. Practical, utilitarian design is paired with soft pastel hues, textile textures, and flexible forms. Recycled hospital linens are transformed into patchworks, hybrid objects, or decorative pieces, while colorful X-rays suggest abstract or organic figures. The overall atmosphere balances clinical neutrality with subtle sensory evocation, creating a nuanced and immersive experience.

Benoît Piéron au Palais de Tokyo : une exposition entre soin, vulnérabilité et imaginaire — ©Andy Keate

A Poetic Celebration of Fragility and Instability

Some installations rely on subtle, discreet devices that play with light, sound, or plants. Beams of light filtering through a door hint at a hidden space, accompanied by minimalistic sound design. The sound of an aspirin dissolving becomes a resonant acoustic motif, evoking both a chemical process and an abstract soundscape. Meanwhile, plants inspired by those found in waiting rooms assemble fragments of uncertain landscapes—straddling the line between domesticated decor and wild greenery.

The concept of vulnerability runs throughout the entire project, not as an exception but as a shared condition. Benoît Piéron explores the fragility of bodies, identities, and mental states, while also drawing connections to broader ecological issues. The plants featured in the exhibition, which are both decorative and potentially toxic, embody this ongoing tension between care and danger, utility and precariousness.

A Newly Crafted Exhibition Designed for the Palais de Tokyo

For this exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, the artist presents an entirely new body of work, created in close dialogue with the architecture, volumes, and light of the space. The environment becomes an active element of the installation, emphasizing a sense of instability that runs throughout the entire piece. This sense of instability is not viewed negatively but rather as a fundamental aspect of the work, reflecting social statuses, life journeys, and physical or mental transformations.

The exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo offers a thoughtful and unconventional perspective on themes that are rarely explored in contemporary art from this angle. By blending personal experience, visual installations, and reflections on the conditions of existence, the project creates a space for imagination to take center stage—as a tool for transformation and adaptation. Visitors are invited to interpret the artwork in a way that is uniquely their own, allowing for a personal and evolving experience.

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