30 ans déjà! #1

30 ans deja Xippas Paris 16 janvier – 13 mars 2021_21 web

Bettina Rheims

Xippas celebrates its 30th anniversary

With works by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Peter Halley, Valérie Jouve, Vera Lutter, Marco Maggi, Vik Muniz, Matthew Porter, Philippe Ramette, Bettina Rheims, Pablo Reinoso, Lucas Samaras, James Siena and Takis

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Xippas is pleased to present a cycle of exhibitions honoring its artists and its thirty-years history. The first of these exhibitions will feature works by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Peter Halley, Valérie Jouve, Vera Lutter, Marco Maggi, Vik Muniz, Matthew Porter, Philippe Ramette, Bettina Rheims, Pablo Reinoso, Lucas Samaras, James Siena and Takis.

Over the last thirty years, Xippas has worked alongside its artists to promote their talent. The gallery has published numerous catalogues and collaborated with prestigious institutions internationally. More than 500 exhibitions have been shown within its venues in Paris, Brussels, Athens, Geneva, Montevideo and Punta del Este.
Renos Xippas inaugurated his gallery in Paris on October 19, 1990 with a major exhibition dedicated to Takis’ sculptures. For this very first exhibition, presented on three floors, Takis worked with the specific features of the gallery’s architecture and conceived an environment made of magnetic sculptures. On the top floor, the artist aligned a series of musical sculptures (a variation of his famous Musicals) which generated beautiful and mysterious sounds. On the ground floor, he installed a group of luminous signals made with Archimedes screws. On the lower level, using the architecture’s four symmetrical I-beam columns, Takis designed a grid floor and created a gigantic electromagnetic chess-game referencing Marcel Duchamp. Its pieces were made with metallic ribbons and rods anchored to insulators. They were attracted to each other by electromagnets placed on the checkered floor. Thereafter, numerous exhibitions were organized with Takis who became overtime a historic and iconic artist of the gallery.

In 1990, at the time of Xippas’s inauguration, the Marais area in Paris was far from experiencing today’s art hustle. Only a few galleries had settled there. The gallery opened on three levels in the building it still occupies: 108 rue Vieille du Temple. This historic address has been remembered since by all visitors thanks to a range of large windows on the first floor and to the long wooden staircase leading to it.

Since then, Xippas has operated as a platform to promote and discover international artists including Chuck Close, Lucas Samaras, Peter Halley, Vik Muniz, Robert Irwin, Vera Lutter, Takis, etc. It has also played an important role in the career of French artists such as Philippe Ramette, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Valérie Jouve, Bertille Bak, Yves Bélorgey, Yvan Salomone, Dominique Blais, etc.

In the years 2000, the gallery expanded internationally. Today Xippas is present in four countries: France (Paris), Switzerland (Geneva), Belgium (Brussels and Knokke) and Uruguay (Montevideo and Punta del Este). Among the most recent exhibition spaces to open, is Baronian Xippas, inaugurated in 2019 in Brussels following a long collaboration between Albert Baronian and Renos Xippas. In December 2020, and also Belgium, a new Baronian Xippas space opened in Knokke. Earlier in January 2020, in Punta del Este (Uruguay), a gallery space was opened on a 6 hectare natural site, in the famous South American seaside resort.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the gallery and revisit its history, Xippas Paris will organize three successive exhibitions featuring the works of the artists who have shared years of fruitful collaborations with the gallery. This anniversary will also be an opportunity to bring together critics, journalists, collectors and art lovers around a common passion.