Italian artist Paola Pivi returns to Perrotin Paris with “Live Again,” a multifaceted exhibition that transforms the gallery’s historic Marais spaces into a surreal landscape of lemon-tree constellations, silk-embroidered manifestos, and meditative pearl sculptures. Running through April 18, 2026, the show marks a pivotal moment in Pivi’s decades-long career, blending her signature irony with a profound ecological and political urgency that invites the viewer to reconsider the boundaries between the organic and the artificial.
The conceptual vision of a living cosmos anchors the visitor’s journey in the “New Life” series. Here, the artist has deconstructed fifty lemon trees to create star-shaped sculptures that occupy the room like a celestial map fallen to earth. This is not a static display of nature; the branches have been harvested with such precision that their roots are destined to regrow, ensuring the artistic process is one of literal regeneration rather than consumption.
A sensory trigger permeates the air as the scent of Sicily bridges the gap between the tactile bronze replicas and the living, breathing organic matter. It is a world where flora becomes a universe, suggesting that the path to renewal begins with a careful, almost surgical, intervention in the cycle of life. This immersive atmosphere challenges the traditional gallery experience, turning a visual encounter into an olfactory and spatial meditation.
Technical details and material subversion reveal the “Anti-Bot” soul of Pivi’s work, particularly in her new silk embroideries. For the first time, the artist’s iconic typography—familiar to many from her public installations—is rendered in luscious thread, weaving sharp political critiques and spiritual inquiries into a traditionally domestic medium. This play on scale and texture continues with her “pearl” wall sculptures. Thousands of artificial pearls are accumulated with obsessive patience, mimicking the defensive biological process of an oyster, creating iridescent surfaces that capture light with a unique “luster.”
Contextual impact through political reflection brings a sharp, sudden weight to the exhibition’s final stages. In a stark departure from her more playful “characters,” Pivi introduces a series of deflated balloons held by iron rings. Originally conceived as a tribute to victims of the Mafia, these inert shapes serve as a mirror to collective apathy. The “punch to the gut” is delivered through the realization that these burst objects represent the human condition in the face of systemic violence, stripping away the vivid plumage of her famous bears to focus on the skeletal remains of a celebration.
A dialogue across the Atlantic emerges as this Parisian exploration of life cycles mirrors another significant Perrotin opening. While Pivi redefines the interior landscape of the Marais, the French artist JR is currently engaging with the vast Californian horizon at Perrotin Los Angeles. His exhibition, “Horizons,” gathers a decade of interventions—from the monumental toddler peering over the U.S.–Mexico border to portraits within the Tehachapi correctional facility—that similarly use the human form to bridge social and physical divides. Together, these two exhibitions underscore a global curatorial effort to position art not just as an object of beauty, but as a vital instrument for empathy and change.