What's On: The System is Alive at Perrotin Art Gallery London
French art dealer Emmanuel Perrotin founded his first gallery in 1990 at the age of 21. Since then, the successful gallerist has worked closely with a roster of international artists, some for more than 30 years, to bring them to the fore. Today, there are Perrotin exhibition spaces in capitals across the globe from Paris to Shanghai and, as of March 2025, London.
Located in the heart of Mayfair, Perrotin London features 350 square metres of completely refurbished space in Claridge’s. It offers a programme created together with its artists to coincide with the city’s major cultural events, including Frieze London, where the gallery has participated since 2004.
Running from now until 2 August, The System is Alive at Perrotin London showcases the work of 12 contemporary artists. Working across various media, this talented group dismantles and challenges the systems that shape everyday life, whether by probing into personal or emotional infrastructures, engaging in cultural rewiring or subverting the socio-political status quo.
Split into several parts, the show's opening section reflects the inherent logic of abstract systems in the form of repetition and material encoding amongst other processes. Take Josh Sperling’s sculptural compositions, for instance. Each piece is grounded in repeat patterns and modular forms, while Bernard Frize’s paintings flip between rule-bound and chance-driven pendulum swings. And Gregor Hildebrandt’s minimalist works explore the cultural memory that is embedded in medial imprints.
Elsewhere, systems of cultural rewiring feature in the works of Nina Chanel Abney. The artist is best known for disrupting the dominant visual codes of contemporary media with her vibrant, haphazardly composed paintings that explore the construction of race and gender within social and political discourses. Meanwhile, Takashi Murakami makes references to pop culture and consumerist aesthetics via his kaleidoscope of Japanese painting styles, while Paola Pivi reconfigures the logic of everyday objects to subvert expectations and perceptual norms.
The final part of the show centres around protest works by Barry McGee and Iván Argote. Here, McGee draws from urban graffiti culture to create socially charged interventions in public spaces, while Argote challenges established political narratives, often conveyed through monuments on public plinths, by applying a subtle visual language of resistance enriched with humour.
The new gallery can be accessed through the Claridge’s ArtSpace Café on Brook’s Mews. Designed by British architect John Pawson, the café features a sleek marble interior that is perfectly in tune with Perrotin London's gallery below.
With summer in full swing and a mouthwatering mix of fresh salads and artfully arranged petit gâteaux to choose from, why not pull up a chair or get your lunch to go? The packaging alone, little white cubes adorned with black Claridge's ArtSpace Café lettering, is all the inspiration you need to create an artful picnic composition of your own in any of the royal parks located near Bond Street.
Perrotin London, Claridge's, Brook's Mews, London W1K 4HR