In the Frame: artist Stéphane Thidet

What inspired your transformation of Christie’s for Paris Art Week?

There are several important ideas that led me to this installation: the notion of transmission, a common thread, what creates a link, what is recurrent. These thoughts apply to objects that pass through Christie’s, going from one hand to another. The history of the building also inspired me.

Many of your installations are in quiet spaces, while this is in a busy city. Has that changed your approach?

It seems important to me that a work of art, though obviously aimed at an audience, should also address the context in which it is located. I have been lucky enough to be invited to work in many places conducive to contemplation — and in such places, whether an abbey or a museum, visitors expect to see, to look, to immerse themselves.

When I work in public spaces, on the other hand, passers-by find themselves becoming viewers quite unexpectedly. As with Rideau in Nantes (where the façade of a theatre was transformed into a waterfall), or Impact in Le Havre (where jets of water strike each other in mid-air), I often introduce a slight distortion or a simple addition to what is already there, so that things we forget to look at out of habit resonate again.

Is Le Fil Rouge influenced by other installation artists, such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude?

Obviously, those two artists are part of my cultural landscape, and many of their projects have had an impact on me. More broadly, artists like Gordon Matta-Clark and Michael Heizer have always fascinated me with their ability to produce work on just the right scale for a given building, place or landscape. But while working on Le Fil Rouge, it was the idea of lines, rhythms, windings and weaving that preoccupied me, and it was artists such as Vera Molnár and Pierrette Bloch that I had in mind.

Does it reference the building’s history as the former home of the fashion house Callot Soeurs?

Yes, absolutely. Wherever it’s possible and meaningful, I like the idea of awakening the spirit of a place. And this building already had a beautiful story: these four sisters were adventurers in their industry. And their journey touched me all the more because my own grandmother worked in a fashion house when she first arrived in Paris from the countryside, and tales of her adventures were part of my childhood.

My initial design was influenced by the rhythms found in lines made by sewing machines, notably one called the ‘Invisible Hem Stitch’. The idea was to see if this stitch could be applied to the balconies of the façade.

Tell us about your work There is no new world, unveiled last year in Rome’s Villa Medici gardens.

It’s a utopian project: to build a house at the top of a tree without touching the tree. That paradoxical desire raises several questions for me. Is it possible to live without ‘occupying’? How many trees does it take to preserve just one? Is it arrogant to want to achieve a form of asceticism? The result is an impressive technical achievement: a framework of a hundred steps that you climb up to reach this simple little cabin above the tree’s canopy.

What ritual or routine keeps you going?

I would say that routine is exactly what I try to avoid. My aim is not to get trapped by the whirlwind of everyday life, which little by little erases what is beautiful, strong and simple before our eyes. So my ritual is to never cease to be amazed — to be curious, sensitive and driven by emotion.

What work of art made you see things differently?

This may seem far removed from what I do, but it was my first encounter with Mark Rothko’s work at the Tate in London. I must have been 19, and I was overcome with emotion. I didn’t know that this was what painting could be — a painting that comes out of its frame, that comes to life beyond its canvas.

The materials you work with are often natural and elemental. Why is this?

I think being from the countryside meant that the first things I ever played with were sticks, stones and earth — whatever was around. There’s a certain universality to such elemental materials, a language that everyone can share. A kind of brute force can also emerge from them, alongside their cracks and fragilities.

Which artist do you wish you knew more about — or who are you watching right now?

It would be difficult for me to pick out only one or two. It is the young art scene that I am watching at the moment, and it fascinates me — its desire to deconstruct, reconstruct, invent new grammars, envision a new world and see the potential for new poetry that can take root there.

What is the most memorable show you’ve seen in the past year?

I keep thinking about the exhibition Enormément Bizarre: The Jean Chatelus collection at the Centre Pompidou. The passion this man was able to maintain for works that are untouched by fashion or trends. Despite the discomfort of the world that is being built and unfolding before our eyes, what emerges is an overflowing passion for art and its possible forms.

What are you reading at the moment? And why does Thoreau’s Walden interest you?

I’m finishing 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster, starting La Maison vide by Laurent Mauvignier, and also reading A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez. I like contradictory worlds, the intersection of thoughts from worlds that are different from my own.

Walden was a text I returned to a lot. I was moved by the author’s ability to bring out the sensitive and the poetic in what was a utopian economic and political manifesto.

Alongside Le Fil Rouge, what are you working on?

In collaboration with the CNES [the French national space agency], I sent a device for creating music into space. It is now docked with the International Space Station and will remain in orbit for a year, writing a musical score based on everything it can capture from the journey. I am also preparing a new work for the Chapelle Saint Joseph de La Grave in Toulouse, and a new project for the Daegu Art Museum in South Korea.

Le Fil Rouge, Stéphane Thidet’s transformation of Christie’s façade at 9 Avenue Matignon in Paris, is open for Paris Art Week and remains on view until 11 January 2026. Explore the sales at Christie’s in Paris