Décor et Installations at Musee Gobelins

LIZ SAYS: I am so excited. I saw such a fabulous show today. The kind of art exhibit that thrills you. The kind of exhibition that you didn't expect and can't predict.
The Musee de Manufacteur des Gobelins is a museum of  the best pieces done by an age old tapestry, furniture and rug manufacturer in Paris. There is a major street, in the 5th arrondisment, named after the factory. It has been in business for centuries. Now, tapestry may read boring and musty, but this place is neither. They are innovative and fun. They have some of the best Art Deco tapestries of the Modern Age, with cars. planes and flappers with cigs, in their regular collection, not to mention all the gorgeous textiles you expect in Paris.
But, right now through April, there is a show called 'Decor et Installations'. It is a collection of works riffing on and reflecting off of chosen tapestries in the collection. Sometimes the reflections are literal, with mirrors and spaces in between leading your eye back to what you just saw, only to see it in yet another way. It reminds you to look around, to look at and through. There was video on the slightly baroque ceiling, video of what we thought was the back of the tapestry hung in the room and reflected off a mirror in 4 parts angled on the floor. The mirrors were angled so that we could see the moment on the ceiling, the static, curved modernist tapestry and the more formal windows garnished with women's heads garnished with flowers in the typical French liberty style. It was dizzying; the choices of where to look, what to see and what to think.
A rug galaxy with two seats, your seat in the universe upholstered with the things of life, was in the center of one dark room. 
There were flies made of lace, with the drawings to show the origin and the intricate lace to show the conclusions. 
There was a octagonal mirrored space that you could enter, with booties to protect the mirrored floor, where everything including the viewer was reproduced infinitely. The exterior of the same space reflected the tapestries on the was and the viewer. There were words, but I am not one for words, not when the are is so vividly alive.
For me, the point was well made without one written word.