Night Mode

The spaces of the Fondation Pernod Ricard have been dimmed to welcome the exhibition Night Mode, French-Iranian artist Arash Nassiri’s first large-scale, solo show in a French institution. Composed of a brand new set of sculptures and a video titled A Bug’s Life (2026), co-produced with the Chisenhale Gallery in London where it was on show from January to March of this year, this iteration of the project offers a new perspective on the artist’s work. Still rooted in a logic of assemblage, and in the formal and conceptual associations characteristic of the work — which, at times, can feel like a collision between worlds — the exhibition draws a compelling parallel between the building of fictional universes and the feeling of disorientation tied to situations of migration.  

While it appears, in Night Mode, like the hidden face of a pop universe formed by misused consumer goods and references to mass culture, this thought process echoes, more than anything, the life of the artist. Born in Tehran in 1986 before spending the first years of his life in the Lignon, near Geneva, in a large ensemble characteristic of the 60s modernist utopias, Arash Nassiri now lives in Berlin. The Iranian capital has remained a fundamental anchor point, inhabiting his practice like an independent, migrating entity overlaying various representations of the world, as seen in his films Tehran-Geles (2014) and City of Tales (2017). He imagines Tehran like a prism revealing the ghosts and fantasies of a fragmented history, without ever turning it into a display of the gaps and differences that might stand between places in the collective imagination.   

This interest is now pursued in the film A Bug’s Life, which fills the main space of the Fondation in the shape of an immersive installation whose light atmosphere seeps through the rest of the exhibition. Here we discover, filmed from the eyes of a bug-puppet with phosphorescent eyes, the inside of a luxurious villa perched on the heights of Beverly Hills. Marble and gilding frame the precious furniture and the majestic stairs that the small wooden animal, articulated and animated by strings, visits at night, sheltered from sights but not from all the dangers that a clandestine creature could face during such an exploration.  

As we spend more time with it, the image slowly reveals more clues, hinting at the fact that this palace is in fact the work of Iranian architect Hamid Omrani. Famous for having designed what will later be known, derogatorily, as the Persian Palaces, he became a well known character to the richer families of the Persian diaspora, arrived to the United States after the 1979 revolution. These houses he designed — blending various geographical inspirations and time periods —, whose composite style and large proportions were banned in 2004 by this wealthy town of Los Angeles, have for the most part been destroyed, or have undergone extensive reworks. The one we uncover as we follow the bold and equally clumsy bug, represents one of the last, most remarkable of its kind.  

As a result Night Mode, by borrowing and reinterpreting the usual formats of entertainment through various methods, echoes the questions that have shaped the work of Arash Nassiri since the beginning of his career. Identity is shown here in its decidedly hybrid nature, at the crossroads of various sources of influences and many desires, a complex construction constantly shifting and rearranging itself.  

Franck Balland  

Exhibition Curator  

_{Arash Nassiri, A Bug’s Life (still), 2026, film. Co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London; Fluentum, Berlin; and Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris. Produced by Chisenhale Gallery. With support through residencies at Callie's, Berlin and Villa Albertine, Los Angeles. Headline Supporters: Fondation des Artistes and Fluxus Art Projects. With additional support from the Chisenhale Gallery Commissions Circle. Courtesy of the artiste and Ginny on Frederick (London).}
 

_{Writer & director: Arash Nassiri
Puppeteer : Soledad Zarate
Head of production: Olivia Aherne
Assistant producer: Oscar Abdulla
Director of photography: Manuel Branáa 
Camera assistant: Kevin Ulibarri
Grip: Ryan Culbertson
Runner: Arash Nassiri
Sound: Nicolas Becker & Andrea Ferrara
Foley: Heikki Kossi & Janne Laine
Mix: Andrea Ferrara
Composer: Hesam Abedini
Puppet conception: Soledad Zarate & Arash Nassiri
Puppet maker: Çağrı Yılmaz
Additional puppet design: Samantha Lake
Puppet consultant: Kahbia Sada
Animatronic artist: Jason Cook
Puppet rehearsal: Georg Jenisch
Homeowner: Siavash Shirani & Afsaneh Mansouri
Architect & consultants: Hamid Omrani, Greg Goldin, Hamed Khosravi
A warm thank you to Hamid Omrani, without whom this project would not have been possible.}