Galleria Continua is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition space in France: 15 years after the opening of Galleria Continua Les Moulins in the Parisian countryside, another space opens, this time in the heart of the French capital in Le Marais.Galleria Continua Paris – 800 square metres on two floors, with a string of windows that run around the corner between Rue du Temple and Rue Michel-le-Comte, a stone’s throw from the Centre Pompidou – an unconventional situation, open to experimentation, it encourages a living of the space that is beyond the usual standards of set-up; throughout the course of its construction, it will be equipped with a café, a store and a room dedicated to meetings and talks. “The project comes from the idea of creating a welcoming space, a convivial place, that is flexible, inclusive, accessible to all and does not architecturally adhere to the canons of the white cube; a workshop of contemporary languages that brings together art, sociality and culture. An environment open to multiculturality where people with stories, resources and different interests can meet even just to read a magazine or to exchange thoughts, experiences and plans”, state Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurizio Rigillo, Galleria Continua’s founders.“Truc à faire”, the title of the event that kicks off this new project, expresses the need of the three gallerists to respond to an incidental and inescapable call: “one thing to do”.JR curates the first exhibition, an exhibition event that will occupy, in an unexpected way, this location that previously housed a wholesale resale leather goods activity. The works chosen by JR will creep into every nook and cranny, conquering the hundreds of shelves that inhabit the walls, with the declared desire not to modify the original structure but rather to reveal its history before then undergoing an extraordinary metamorphosis: “a space where art works are sold, halfway between a cathedral and a supermarket, it’s a place where we get closer to infinity and where we can buy consumer objects. For this new space, I wanted to bring together two universes, create a place that is lived by art, where we come to walk, where we encounter works by artists of many different generations, coming from 5 continents: from Ai Weiwei, to Daniel Buren, Anish Kapoor, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Pascale Marthine Tayou, to name a few. I would like it to be a space for discussion, meetings, surprises, where we buy a book and when we open it, we discover it’s signed by the author, where we can have an Italian coffee in a dynamic environment, where we immerse ourselves in the works that are present” (JR)Shortly after the opening, in collaboration with MBL architectes, the space will be stripped back: removing the internal structures will show the bones of the building, including the signs of its past. It will then be ready to host a second exhibition.

While preserving the patina of time and the unique features of the premises, the subsequent renovations will proceed hand in hand with the activity of the gallery, marking a continuum between art and life.