Jesse Darling, VANITAS, 2024
Petit Palais, Art Basel Paris 2024's Public Program

In Jesse Darling’s VANITAS (2024) at the Petit Palais, metal barriers are contorted, twisted and stretched from their original shapes. Commonly used to inhibit free movement, to Darling metal barriers symbolize division and official control. By distorting them, the artist highlights the vulnerabilities of the power structures they represent. Presented in London for Darling’s 2023 Turner Prize exhibition under the title Come On England, the installation is reinterpreted in Paris in a special presentation together with the glass cases of his seminal work Untitled (Still Life) (2018 – ongoing), containing flowers which gradually decay. The project critiques privatization and economic exclusion, underscoring how both power structures and natural life cycles are vulnerable to inevitable decline and change.

Courtesy Arcadia Missa, Chapter NY, Molitor and Sultana
The galleries would like to thank Debeaulieu for the flowers ♡