Acne Studios unveils Acne Paper Palais Royal, its first permanent gallery space, nestled under the iconic arcades of the Palais Royal in Paris. A manifesto project that combines heritage, artistic experimentation, and contemporary aesthetics. For its opening, the gallery is making a strong statement with an exhibition by Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker, whose unique universe questions bodies, gazes, and conventions of representation.
Located at 124 Galerie de Valois (75001 Paris), the new Acne Paper Palais Royal gallery is a natural extension of Acne Studios' creative universe. Founded in Stockholm in 1996, the Swedish fashion house has never limited itself to fashion: design, photography, publishing, and contemporary art have always been at the heart of its approach.
With this Parisian space, open Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m., Acne Studios physically anchors its cultural vision in a legendary location. Beneath the neoclassical colonnades of the Palais Royal, just steps from the Comédie-Française and historic gardens, the gallery strikes a subtle balance between heritage and avant-garde.
The gallery takes its name from Acne Paper magazine, a publication launched by the brand in 2005 that quickly gained cult status. At the crossroads of fashion, literature, art, and photography, Acne Paper has cultivated a cross-disciplinary, elegant, and often daring perspective for nearly 20 years.
Paul Kooiker: the eye of the storm, the poetry of the bizarre
To inaugurate this space, Acne Studios has chosen artist Paul Kooiker, a unique figure in the contemporary photography scene. Born in the Netherlands in 1964, Kooiker is known for his unsettling yet poetic approach to photographing the human body. His images, often anonymous, blurred, fragmented, or framed in a disturbing manner, overturn traditional codes of nudity, beauty, and sexualization.
For Acne Studios, whose campaigns regularly flirt with the subversive codes of fashion photography, this choice of artist is highly symbolic: a way of proclaiming, right from the outset, that this gallery will be nothing like a traditional showroom, but rather a place for free aesthetic experimentation.
With Acne Paper Palais Royal, Acne Studios is not just settling for a new Parisian showcase. This is a powerful cultural gesture, a declaration of artistic intent.
And if the reputation of the house is anything to go by, this new space is sure to become a must-visit destination on the Parisian creative scene, combining art, fashion, and contemporary visual thinking.
