"Ce que le béton retient", une exposition de Thomas Busuttil

From 15 September to 5 November, Thomas Busuttil and the City of Paris invite Parisians to take a look into the world of skateboarding and its appropriation of public space, through an exhibition presented on the Quai Solférino.

Thomas Busuttil is a skateboarder and photographer who was behind several skate parks in Paris. The images in his project ‘Ce que le béton retient’ are about surfaces: those we walk across without seeing them, those we lay out without knowing why, and those we appropriate in ways no one planned.

Fontaine de Jouvence – 2022; Credit: Thomas Busuttil

The eye behind these photographs comes from street culture, the kind that spots a hidden geometry in ordinary concrete, an improbable beach in a dry canal, and, in an abandoned ramp at the bottom of a harbour, the trace of a desire for space. Shot on analogue film and digital, in black and white and in colour, these images offer a ground-level reading of the contemporary urban world.

‘Ce que le béton retient’

Ordinary photographs of an everyday life lived at several speeds. Images that tell of the emotions of someone looking – from the corner of the street to the four corners of the world. An archaeology of the present, on the move. Without nostalgia.

Attention to what our bodies do to spaces, and what spaces do to our bodies. Each time with the same intention: to take possession of a space, to measure it with the body, to do something with it, and to experience it in one's own way.

An ode to wear, to sliding, to experimentation, to fleeting presence. To the memory of passing through.

Thomas Busuttil