Raymond Hains: A Work Under Construction. From the Grand Louvre to the 3 Cartier

An installation originally created for the 1994 exhibition is now reimagined on Place du Palais-Royal. It features photographs taken by Hains at the Grand Louvre (1981-1991), the redevelopment project initiated by President François Mitterrand to modernize the museum. The photographs depict bent tubes, stacked concrete slabs, barriers, and other elements of the worksite, which Hains considered "sidewalk sculptures." 

Displayed in billboard-style structures near the site where the photographs were taken, these images speak to Raymond Hains's interest in public space as a site of observation, where ordinary things can become the source of aesthetic experience. 

Raymond Hains's work is itself a site of ongoing construction: an open-ended practice and a way of thinking always in motion. In the galerie Valois, reproductions of the artist's works and archival materials shed light on the network of associations that shaped his thought. Visitors discover that the name "Cartier" led Hains in several directions at once: to Jacques Cartier, the navigator from Saint-Malo who explored Canada; to Jacques Cartier, head of Cartier London whose offices welcomed General de Gaulle upon his arrival in London in 1940; and to Henri Cartier-Bresson, the photographer of the "decisive moment". 

Raymond Hains's work invites us to wander through time and space, guided by the playful and open-ended logic that runs throughout his oeuvre. 

Raymond Hains seemingly predicted the Fondation Cartier's move to its location across from the Louvre, forty years after its inception.