"Penser le Présent" A gallery owner's life: Dialogue with Chantal Crousel and Niklas Svennung

In 1980, Chantal Crousel founded her eponymous art gallery with the intention of reporting on the changes in international contemporary creation in France and around the world. Of Belgian origin, she chose to represent artists of different nationalities participating in the elaboration of a universal language through a wide variety of mediums.

The artistic orientation of the first years of the gallery is marked by a new generation of artists from the European and American artistic movements that were unheard of at the end of the 1970s, notably Tony Cragg, Gilbert & George or Cindy Sherman. Chantal Crousel realized the first exhibitions in France of Gabriel Orozco, Mona Hatoum, Absalon, Melik Ohanian or Rirkrit Tiravanija.

In 2000, her son Niklas Svennung joined her. Installed on rue Charlot since 2005, and today directed by Niklas Svennung, the gallery perpetuates an artistic dialogue, both poetic and conscious, representing artists, young or established, who, for the most part, question social space by using new forms in the service of innovative ideas.

Penser le Present is produced with the support of Société Générale.
 

Photo: Jean-Luc Moulène / ADAGP, Paris, 2021