Interdit au public

The Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain and the RATP unveil in the alcoves of the Galerie Valois, Palais-Royal – Musée du Louvre metro station, Interdit au public, a photographic report by filmmaker, screenwriter, photographer and writer Alain Guiraudie, produced in the heart of the construction site of the future spaces of the Fondation Cartier.

So, when the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain invited me to take photos of the construction site of its future premises on the Place du Palais-Royal, I jumped at the opportunity. For me, it was a chance to photograph the work, the different trades, to get a close look at how buildings are constructed. I wound up inside this giant enclosed vessel, shut to the outside – a sort of vast modern cavern, free of bustle, where people were working, walking around, leveling, smoothing and drilling in the calm. I was even surprised to see so many workers going about their tasks on their own, independently of the others. A few mornings spent onsite didn’t lead me to grasp how buildings are constructed; in fact, from one visit to the next, it seemed like nothing had changed, but I always had new subjects to photograph. It’s all still quite mysterious to me. I let myself be drawn to the light and the color of the site, the bodies and figures inhabiting this space, the movements and flows.

The Galerie Valois is a former shopping gallery, which today connects the Palais-Royal - Musée du Louvre metro station on Lines 1 and 7 with the former Grands Magasins du Louvre department store in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. The gallery opened in 1919, housing window displays and stalls of goods intended to draw passers-by into the department store. The gallery’s Art Nouveau style, recognizable by its floral motifs, has made it into a landmark passage within the Parisian urban fabric. The RATP and the Fondation Cartier wanted to undertake a partnership in this heritage space, which leads to the future entrance of the latter’s new site.

Starting in April 2025, the Fondation Cartier and the RATP are thus unveiling a new project by the artist Alain Guiraudie titled Interdit au Public, in which he creates a dialogue between his work and the alcoves of the Galerie Valois.