Jordan Roth’s first claim to fame is as a Broadway producer behind hits like Angels in America, The Book of Mormon, Kinky Boots, Hadestown, and Moulin Rouge!, but this week, he has Paris abuzz with his new installation at the Hôtel de Guise. The exhibit is presented in partnership with Design Miami and Salon 94 Design, and transports a reimagining of his elegant former West Village apartment to the 7th Arrondissement. Entitled “To Think of the Tranquil Life of Things,” it is not a direct copy of the apartment. Rather, it is more of an immersive distillation of Roth’s erstwhile domestic habitat and his evolution during the 15 years that he lived there.
This is Roth’s first venture into functional design and performative sculpture. He was inspired by Georges Perec’s 1978 novel Life: A User’s Manual, a book that structures itself around the interiors of a Paris apartment building and the accumulation of lives within. But the impetus was Roth’s departure from the apartment he lived in when his son was born.
Chair from Jordan Roth’s “To Think of the Tranquil Life of Things.”
Photo: Photograph by August King. Courtesy Jordan Roth Studios.
Installation view of Jordan Roth’s “To Think of the Tranquil Life of Things,” from Paris Art Week.
Photo: August King. Courtesy Jordan Roth Studios.
The 18th-century hôtel particulier at 72 Rue de l’Université makes for a stunning backdrop. Visitors wandering through the rooms will see furnishings draped in swaths of cloth decorated with photo collages of Roth. It’s about memory: the producer artist posed as versions of himself from various points in his time in the apartment, dressed in the outfits he had worn there. The photos on the textiles were taken by photographer Ben Hassett, and the Roth in them is the current one, recalling former selves. This creates an uncanny effect reminiscent of neurological phenomena where personal recollections of past events are less a direct recall than a memory of the most recent revisitation of the memory.
Installation view of Jordan Roth’s “To Think of the Tranquil Life of Things,” from Paris Art Week.
Photo: August King. Courtesy Jordan Roth Studios.
“To Think the Tranquil Life of Things” is on view at the Hôtel de Guise, 72 Rue de l’Université in Paris October 19–25.