193 Gallery

193 Gallery is thrilled to collaborate with Jérôme Sans – curator, artistic director and founder of cultural institutions – to present “Flowers Blooming on Acid”, a solo exhibition by artist Rafael Domenech, on view from April 1 to May 31, 2025 at 193 Gallery Paris. Curator, artistic director and director of institutions, Jérôme Sans is renowned for his pioneering, cross-disciplinary approach to culture and the exhibition. He has instilled new models for a new, democratic approach to art and culture. Jérôme Sans is one of the most creative and unconventional players in the contemporary art world. These models are imitated the world over, following the example of the Palais de Tokyo, which he co-founded in Paris and co-directed for the first six years with Nicolas Bourriaud, before heading the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing from 2008 to 2012. Alongside his publications, he was creative director and editor-in-chief of the French cultural magazine L’Officiel Art, and is a regular contributor to Purple.

For his first monographic exhibition in Paris at the 193 Gallery, Rafael Domenech draws a new space within that of the gallery, creating entirely different possibilities in an otherwise generic white cube. Planting the seeds for a new story and context, he divides the space with wooden walls that act like folding screens – an object which traditionally holds an important place in art history. Like floating paintings in space, the architectural device is both a work of art in itself, and a recipient for other works mounted on its walls as well as contained inside it, in the manner of a Russian Doll. As is Rafael Domenech’s custom, when creating new spaces, everything inside them, with no exception, becomes a work of art. From the outset, he thwarts categories, entirely reversing the traditional principles of an exhibition and the status of an artwork. Labyrinthine, circulatory, his redesigned space allows for multiple entrances, circulations, itineraries. Every possible passage creates new combinations, unexpected encounters, fresh dialogues between one work and the next. Far from being linear, or easily disclosing itself, “Flowers Blooming on Acid” is an “open exhibition”, in the Umberto Ecco sense, where scenarios, interpretations, and experiences are intrinsically plural.