MAGMA brings its pages to paris exhibition with works by charles ray, jonas mekas and more

MAGMA turns ITS PAGES into PARIS EXHIBITION

With its third issue, The Archive of the Future, MAGMA transforms from printed matter into lived experience and takes shape in a spatial exhibition at 127 rue de Turenne in Paris. Conceived by Matière Noire together with MAGMA and presented with the support of Bottega Veneta, the show invites visitors to move from reading to presence and translate the multidisciplinary spirit of the journal into space.

Open until November 19th, 2025, the exhibition features works by Charles Ray, Jonas Mekas, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Patti Smith, Jean-Luc Godard, and others. Its contemplative environment resists the accelerated pace of the contemporary art circuit and encourages a more intimate form of attention.

installation images by Nicolas Brasseur

The Archive of the Future: inhabiting the rhythm of a book

The Archive of the Future exhibition brings together original works featured in the publication, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, and time-based media, and proposes an unusual encounter with art’s past, present, and speculative temporalities. Its scenography, developed by Matière Noire, builds an atmosphere of deceleration, an invitation to inhabit the temporal rhythm of a book. The visitor walks through an archive still in the making, an assemblage of voices, gestures, and memories. To ‘inhabit a book,’ as the curators describe, is to experience art as a shared duration, where reading becomes listening and viewing becomes dwelling. Throughout its month-long run, screenings, readings, performances, and conversations with participating artists become parts of the exhibition.

Among the works on view are five poetic voice recordings by sculptor Charles Ray, who for fifteen years has recorded reflections during solitary dawn walks across Los Angeles. His Five Prose Poems (2022), curated by Jean-Pierre Criqui and Cyrus Goberville, open the exhibition with the intimacy of spoken thought.

Nearby, two portraits by Elizabeth Peyton, The Death of Sarpedon (2025) and L’Aigle à deux têtes (Les Amants) (2024–2025), extend the artist’s delicate exploration of desire and temporality, while a group of unpublished Polaroids by Jonas Mekas, accompanied by drawings by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, anchors the show in a spirit of artistic camaraderie.

MAGMA transforms from printed matter into lived experience

fragments of history and homage

A sequence of works by Jill Mulleady pays homage to Lautréamont’s hermaphrodite through painting, granite, and woodcut, while Pol Taburet’s bronze and charcoal pieces merge spiritual symbolism with corporeal immediacy. Stanislava Kovalčíková contributes Die gute Hirtin (2025), an oil and foil painting that reflects her ongoing dialogue with archetypes of femininity and devotion.

On a larger scale, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Black and Light (2024) reflects both viewer and world through the artist’s signature mirrored surface, while Michel Journiac’s monumental La Guillotine (Piège pour une exécution capitale) (1971) reasserts its political and performative charge in the present. Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys present a new series of wood prints from 2025, furthering their surreal, psychologically charged practice.

The Archive of the Future issue takes shape in a spatial exhibition

From Godard’s Lens to Smith’s Voice

The MAGMA exhibition’s filmic and sonic program spans nearly a century of creation. Jean-Luc Godard’s first film, Opération Béton (1954), is screened in full, accompanied by a new sound work by Stephan Crasneanscki that weaves fragments of Godard’s own voice and recordings from his archive. Crasneanscki’s Mardi 13 Sept. 2022 Rolle (2025), produced by the Biennale Son, captures the soundscape of Lake Geneva on the day of Godard’s death, folding private mourning into collective memory.

The cinematic thread continues with Jonathan Glazer’s Strasbourg 1518 (2020), inspired by the historical episode of involuntary dancing mania and featuring choreography by dancers from Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal set to a score by Mica Levi. The exhibition closes with Patti Smith’s The Reluctant Master (2021), a piece originally included in Stephan Crasneanscki’s What We Leave Behind, bringing the show’s themes of transmission and legacy full circle.

the show invites visitors to move from reading to presence

the contemplative environment resists the accelerated pace of the contemporary art circuit

the MAGMA exhibition’s filmic and sonic program spans nearly a century of creation

Jean-Luc Godard’s first film, Opération Béton (1954), is screened in full

Archive of the Future brings together original works featured in the publication | image courtesy of MAGMA

an unusual encounter with art’s temporalities | image courtesy of MAGMA

featuring works by Charles Ray, Jonas Mekas, Yoko Ono and more | image courtesy of MAGMA

translating the multidisciplinary spirit of the journal into space | image courtesy of MAGMA

project info:

name: MAGMA No. 3 — Archive of the Future

publication: MAGMA | @magmajournal

location: 127 rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris

set design & scenography: Matière Noire | @matiere.noire.paris

dates: October 20th – November 19th, 2025

curation & artistic direction: Paul Olivennes

head of content production: Louise Brunner

associate editor: Boris Bergmann

graphic direction: Helena Kadji & Rocío Ortiz Faye and Gina

production & technical team: CentralSV

executive and creative production: Louis Matton, Thomas Bihoré-Allegret

support: Bottega Veneta

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