“Yee-Haw,” Paola Pivi’s ninth exhibition at Galerie Perrotin in the last fifteen years, introduces a new series of photographs with animals.

Her diverse work, spanning performances to sculptures to large installations, is punctuated over the years by her photographic representations of animals in performative happenings; these are her most renowned images.

A long way from unicorns and other chimeras, the animals that appear in Paola Pivi’s world are very real. Yet, set in their strange surroundings, they appear as a dream within reality, imbuing them with a mythological aura (ostriches or a donkey sailing on a small boat in the Mediterranean Sea, 84 goldfish swimming in bowls and flying in a passenger airplane in New Zealand, different white animals grazing in an Edenic land, alligators frolicking in whipped cream in Florida or polar bears covered in multicolored feathers posing during the inauguration of Galerie Perrotin in New York). These images cast a new oneiric light over the world, viewed now through the prism of fantasy, of a fabulous bestiary. They appear to reveal a dimension that is a part of everyday life, which has only by chance never occured before in front of someone’s eyes.

For this exhibition, Pivi brought four horses to the Eiffel Tower. The animals seem to have found a new playground, an architectural landscape made to their measure. Once again, Pivi revisits and juxtaposes elements that are both familiar and archetypal into a fantastic iconography.

The creation of a new work on the Eiffel Tower, the most iconic landmark of Paris, is also very meaningful for Pivi, as a way for her to play with the entire city and its history.

Special thanks to the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, to the famous horse trainer Mario Luraschi and Virginie Coupérie-Eiffel, founder of the Longines Paris Eiffel Jumping, an equestrian competition, held at Champ de Mars on July 3, 4, 5, 2015. Virginie Coupérie-Eiffel invited and co-commissioned Paola Pivi to make an artistic contribution to the Longines Paris Eiffel Jumping, which will be used for the poster of the event.

The photographs were shot by Hugo Glendinning.