Born in 1972, French conceptual artist Laurent Grasso creates mysterious atmospheres through immersive and labyrinthine installations that challenge the boundaries of our perceptions and knowledge. Like a film director, he arranges and stages diverse realities in order to create hypnotic systems. Often conceived as quasi-autonomous vision machines, Grasso’s projects attempt to capture and restore phenomena invisible to the human eye and mind. Their scopic dimension questions the will to control, whether it is a question of surveillance, political power, military strategy, or astronomy. Combining the most prospective theories and scientific tools with the oldest beliefs, his works invite us to travel through time and into an interfolding of worlds.

Head of contemporary programs at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Donatien Grau holds doctoral degrees in French and comparative literature from the Sorbonne, in philological and historical sciences from the École des Hautes Études, Paris, and a DPhil from Oxford University. He served as advisor to Azzedine Alaïa for the couturier’s not-for-profit exhibition space, the Galerie (2014–17), and curated the inaugural exhibition of the reopening of the Getty Villa, Malibu, Plato in L. A. (2018). He is an Editor-at-Large of Purple Fashion Magazine and the Brooklyn Rail. He has published widely on the arts and culture of the Roman Empire, on 19th and 20th literary and art history, as well as on contemporary art and culture.