Hauser & Wirth Announces New Paris Gallery

The gallery will also open the doors of its first Make space, dedicated to craft, in the U.S. next month.

This month Hauser & Wirth announced its plans to move into an historic hôtel close to the Champs-Élysées.

Built in 1877, the building at 26 bis rue François 1er in Paris's eighth arrondissement was once home to La Maison Decour a decorative arts gallery that closed in the 1940s. Paris-based architect Luis Laplace is working with Hauser & Wirth on the refit.

Laplace previously worked with the gallery to convert an 18th-century farmstead into Hauser & Wirth Somerset in 2014, and on the restoration and conversion of 18th century naval hospital buildings on Isla del Rey, Menorca, into an art centre complex which was completed last year.

Laplace is also working on Hauser & Wirth's new London flagship on the ground floor of the Grade II-listed former Thomas Goode building in Mayfair, which is set to open next year.

The new four-story Paris location will offer 800 square metres of space, including a six-metre-tall double-height gallery on the ground floor and an additional exhibition space on the first floor.

'The city's importance for artists is undisputed over the centuries and we look forward to adding to this rich history', said Hauser & Wirth President, Iwan Wirth.

Hauser & Wirth currently operates 17 spaces in the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Spain, Monaco, and Hong Kong.

Beyond its conventional gallery business Hauser & Wirth continues to expand its operations along other avenues. Next month, the U.K. based Make Hauser & Wirth initiative will present its first exhibition of craft works in the U.S.

Established in Somerset in 2018, Make is a space dedicated to supporting and showcasing artists working in contemporary crafts, object-making, and material-led processes. It is an initiative that falls within the gallery's broader ethos of embracing not only art but also craft, food, architecture and gardens.

The initiative's new U.S. outpost—located at 50 Hampton Road, a short walk from Hauser & Wirth's main space in Southampton, on New York's Long Island— will open with the group show Of Making and Material from 2 July to 10 September.

The exhibition will showcase a variety of crafts by British makers including: Adam Buick, who makes ceramic forms in response to landscape, Mark Reddy, known for his hand-crafted spoons imbued with symbolic expression, and Rosa Nguyen whose porcelain and ceramic sculptures mimic and incorporate forms of vegetation.

This will be accompanied by an on-site residence with London ceramicist Florian Gadsby in August, and followed by a show of American and British ceramicists and glassmakers in the fall. —[O]