Overview
With its intermittent changing hues, this “lighthouse” translates into code the mythical and unfinished eponymous novel by René Daumal (1908-1944), published posthumously in 1951. This light sequence illuminates the Parisian sky, translating the story of Daumal’s fantastic, metaphysical adventure, which recounts the discovery and collective ascent of a mountain joining earth to sky. An endless quest, an impossible adventure, a metaphor for art and its utopia. Philippe Parreno has designed a new version of this in-situ installation for the Bourse de Commerce, reworking and modifying one of his seminal pieces, originally created in 2001. Mont Analogue is installed at the top of a unique architectural feature, present on the site since the Renaissance, when the building served as the palace of Catherine de’ Medici. This column, a symbol of royal power as much as esoteric eminence (according to legend, the queen’s astrologers, notably Cosimo Ruggieri and Nostradamus observed the stars there) becomes a beacon from which the artist transmits another message to the city. It is in the form of a mysterious code that the artist invites us to discover the invisible, possible, intangible worlds of art.
