AGENDA
From September 24th until January 22nd 2022
Thursday, November 4th 2021
TICKETS
“Isn’t “Memory” the word Jonas Mekas utters the most, in a joyful tone, rolling the R with pleasure? Lyrical, loving, passionate, euphoric, it is with the lightness of an elf that he places himself at the heart of the scene in which he is, of course, both actor and witness, and the images in his films, his ‘stills’, essential in the literal sense, seem to me to be close to those that memory fixes in each of us as mental films, like dreams…”
agnès b., September 1999
agnès b. met Jonas Mekas in 1992 during his exhibition at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume. This marked the beginning of a close friendship and artistic collaboration that spanned three decades, punctuated by several major exhibitions at the Galerie du Jour.
It was on the walls of the gallery that Jonas Mekas first showed his now-famous photograms in 1996. Having always filmed short sequences with his 16mm Bolex camera, he came up with the idea of extracting images from his films and making photographic prints of them. These are the real core of his films, the basic unit comparable to the lines of poetry.
Part intimate narrative, part documentary, part poem, the luminous and radical work of Jonas Mekas, who died in 2019, continues to bear witness to his attachment to people, landscapes, nature and the seasons.
Through a number of iconic series, the Memories of Jonas Mekas exhibition provides an opportunity to discover or rediscover the intimate and powerful work of this great 20th-century poet, lover of cinema, art and life.