"On a street in Paris, just off the Place Vendôme and around the corner from the Ritz, sits a small storefront that, the other day, a passing German tourist referred to as a bordel -literally, a bordello and, figuratively, a "massive mess." The comment was overheard, and translated, by Jasper Sharp, a British-born curator and art historian, who is partly responsible for the massive mess in question-the latest installation in one of two galleries that the New York art dealer Larry Gagosian maintains in Paris."
"With the exhibit opening in just a few days, a team of eight workers was beavering away inside the gallery, moving stacks of old magazines, rearranging tchotchkes on shelves, applying a patina of grunge to new jars and boxes to make them look as if they'd been sitting in a cellar since the Eisenhower Administration. The gallery's normally pristine white walls had been painted to resemble water-stained cinder blocks."
An installation recreates Joseph Cornell's cluttered basement studio inside a Paris Gagosian gallery, complete with plate-glass windows offering street views. A set design team and eight workers aged new objects, arranged magazines and tchotchkes, painted walls to mimic water-stained cinder blocks, and added fake cobwebs to generate authentic mustiness. Curator Jasper Sharp coordinated the mise-en-scène while film director Wes Anderson collaborated remotely by text and photos. The project required precise workmanship to simulate decades of decay and accumulation, employing techniques such as patina application and steel wool to create convincing details.
Read at The New Yorker
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