This model of the world

One of the things I try to convey to students is that this thing about art (and, really, almost any field of culture) is like an infection. William Burroughs wrote that language is a virus from another space, that inhabits us and parasitizes us, pierces us and keeps us busy. The infection of the art (and culture) I'm talking about means that after a certain moment it's impossible to see anything, do anything, talk about anything, that doesn't happen here. That they will be infected. And then they will look at a building and see brutalist features, and even if they go to football their gaze will be conditioned by a thousand external imputations from aesthetic to political issues. An infection that will affect your travels and holidays. Perhaps one day they will find themselves standing in a square like the Place Émile Goudeau in Paris observing a void, nothing, a building that no longer exists, that was demolished, looking through time and space looking at the no longer existing Bateau- Wash. And they will walk. From end to end of the city simply to see an exhibition beyond the specific interest that arouses us.

I have walked Paris from end to end many times. I like to make a rather long circuit that leads from the Palais de Tòquio, past the banks of the Seine, to the Pompidou to enter the galleries of the Marais, go up beyond the Place de la Republique to those of Bellevile and end up dining in a Vietnamese whose toilet is better not to visit.

From now on this route will change inexorably given the temporary closure of the Pompidou. But a new stop has been added: the Pinaud Foundation in the former chamber of the Paris Stock Exchange. Like the Punta Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, both also by Mr. Pinaud, the building is spectacular, even more so than the previous ones. Coming from the Palais and compared to the narrowness of Paris, it is spacious, bright and clean. At the entrance, employees of the foundation kindly approach you to offer themselves as guides. Inside, in a huge round space, during my visit, there was a gigantic projection by Anri Sala: the curved screen with an image quality that rivals the highest definition cinema, accompanied by a perfect acoustics I could say that you can see how the walls exude tickets in the form of displays , architecture and projections. There is no shortage of Maurizio Catelan's watchful pigeons on the ledges ready to shit. In ourselves already so far. So far from what we thought artistic production was. And that here it seems closer to Salma Hayek, Brad Pitt, Oceans Eleven or any Hollywood blockbuster that cannot be assumed by any museum or art center, let alone a public one.