In the heart of Paris along avenue Montaigne, Hôtel Plaza Athénée hosts six monumental sculptures by Michel Bassompierre, on view until 16 April 2026. Installed from the entrance to La Cour Jardin, the Lobby, and Le Relais Plaza, the works transform the palace hotel into an unexpected habitat. Gorillas, bears, and horses, rendered in bronze and Carrara marble, occupy the storied interiors and courtyard with authority, their rounded volumes softening marble floors and gilded moldings.

Bassompierre, who trained at the École des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, developed his practice through close observation, filling sketchbooks in zoos, circuses, and natural history museums to study musculature, balance, and movement. That discipline remains visible in his finished pieces. Though simplified, his animals are anatomically precise, pared down to mass, curve, and presence.

The sculptures feel at once powerful and restrained. A gorilla’s shoulders swell into smooth arcs. A bear’s weight gathers low and steady. A horse stands in poised stillness. Light moves seamlessly across bronze and marble surfaces, reflecting glimmers of sun- and streetlight.

Set against the theatrical heritage of the hotel — part of the Dorchester Collection and long synonymous with haute couture and Parisian spectacle — the works introduce an elemental counterpoint. Balconies framed with red geraniums and salons shaped by decades of fashion shows and diplomatic gatherings form the backdrop, yet Bassompierre’s animals do not compete with that history. Their stillness tempers it, anchoring spaces defined by movement and ceremony.

There is a subtle symmetry in placing wildlife within a palace hotel. Bassompierre’s creatures are never anthropomorphized or allegorical. They appear absorbed in their own gravity. They seem caught in a private moment, as if surprised by the viewer’s presence. In a setting defined by human display and performance, the sculptures reintroduce a sense of elemental life. In doing so, they reshape the experience of the historic interiors, revealing new correspondences between marble and marble, curve and arch, architecture and living form.

The exhibition underscores how contemporary art can reshape historic interiors without erasing them. Instead, it reveals new textures within them: the warmth of marble against marble, the curve of a bear’s back echoing a baroque arch. For a hotel whose identity is intertwined with Parisian fashion and ceremony, the encounter with Bassompierre’s bestiary offers another layer of narrative. The palace becomes less a backdrop and more a shared stage, where art and architecture meet in stillness.