The Galerie Dina Vierny presents the exhibition Marcel Duchamp – The Art of Being Boxed In, on view from September 17 to November 8, 2025.

Around thirty works are brought together at 36 rue Jacob, combining readymades, drawings, sound recordings, editions, and rarely exhibited pieces. This is the third exhibition the gallery has devoted to Duchamp, and it forms part of a broader cultural moment that echoes the major retrospectives scheduled for 2026–2027 at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Pompidou in Paris.

The show features several key pieces from the Duchampian constellation: the 1914 Kodak Box, the Green Box, and the Boîte-en-valise — fragmentary works that condense, displace, and recombine. Several iconic pieces punctuate the exhibition — Comb, Air de Paris, and three distinct versions of L.H.O.O.Q. — along with a rare selection of works on paper: the first sketch for the Sieves of the Large Glass, a rare signed check from 1963, and a biting, ambiguous caricature from Duchamp’s youth (Neither man, nor woman, not even from Auvergne), where an androgynous figure appears for the first time — a possible prefiguration of Rrose Sélavy.

Conceived as a retrospective in miniature, the exhibition does not seek to be exhaustive or didactic, but instead offers glimpses into the essential fragments of an artist who constantly blurred the lines between the author, the artwork, and its reproducibility. Staging a retrospective within the intimate space of the gallery at 36 rue Jacob is a gesture that echoes the Boîte-en-valise itself: the aim is not to fit Duchamp’s entire oeuvre into a small space, but rather to distill his gestures, his ideas, and his methods.

Works by Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon also punctuate the show, recalling the legacy of the Puteaux Group and the avant-garde brotherhood in which Marcel Duchamp was the youngest, the accomplice, and at times the pathfinder.

This exhibition continues the gallery’s recent series of focused monographic shows, including Maillol sensuel (2024), Matisse – Dessins (2024), Robert Couturier – Silhouettes, and Judit Reigl – Spasm with Fire (2025). It also resonates with the two major Duchamp exhibitions previously presented by Dina Vierny at rue Jacob: Les Trois Duchamp (1987) and Marcel Duchamp (1988). It was during that period that Dina Vierny met Teeny Duchamp, the artist’s widow, by chance on a trip to Japan — a meeting that sparked her enduring passion for Duchamp’s world and led her to assemble a complete collection of his readymades.

Pierre and Alexandre Lorquin, grandsons of Dina Vierny and directors of the gallery, note: “This exhibition is a way for us to reconnect with our gallery’s history with Duchamp, while continuing the ambitious program of modern exhibitions we’ve pursued in recent years.”