Wall for the Bride is the latest work in a series of sculptures by Philippe Parreno. The first version of this work was produced for Dancing Around the Bride (2012) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an exhibition that explored artists whose conceptual trajectory came from the Dadaism of Marcel Duchamp. Artists like Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Philippe Parreno each created their own reconsiderations of the role that dance, the composition of music and sound, object and installation production play, through the employment of a Duchampian lense.

Wall for the Bride is a unique element within Parreno’s vernacular of quasi-objects, influenced by this Dadaist questioning of art objects and an awakening of things that seem commonplace. Like Rauschenberg, Cunningham and Cage, Parreno is distinctly influenced by Duchamp’s use of performance and objects as ways to activate space. Throughout his practice, Parreno has made works in direct response to Duchamp’s oeuvre.

The first iteration of his Wall for the Bride, shown in Philadelphia, was a Perspex wall specifically constructed for hanging Marcel Duchamp’s La Mariée (The Bride), an early cubist style painting from 1912. In the 2023 exhibition ‘A Recital of True Events’ at Pilar Corrias, London two new works on canvas by Parreno are installed on Wall for the Bride. Exhibited in tandem with other works by Parreno, the artist uses this work as a way to create a unique environment and disrupt the barriers between human interaction and inanimate sculpture.