Image: Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles
Marciano Art Foundation will present 'Pierre Leguillon: Ads & Brands' from September 18, 2026, through January 2, 2027, staging the project across the MAF Library and Window galleries in Los Angeles. The foundation describes the two-part presentation as focusing on Leguillon “as a voracious and cunning collector,” and the artist’s first institutional exhibition in Los Angeles will combine a selection from his long-running 'Ads' archive with a new installation of 'The Museum of Mistakes'.
Leguillon’s practice is built around collecting, arranging, and recirculating images and objects. According to the exhibition materials, the conceptual artist began his career as a critic and photographer and has since worked in books, slideshows, performances, and installations. His primary material is a growing archive of objects and images that he reconfigures into new presentations, with an approach that considers art history through the artwork, the institution that frames it, the artist, and the artist’s own institutionalization.
In the Window Gallery, Leguillon will present 'Ads:', a selection from his collection of advertisements in which artists appear as models or brand ambassadors. The ongoing work spans from the 1940s to the present and is currently numbered at more than 250 pieces. Organized alphabetically and tailored to Los Angeles and the Marciano Art Foundation, the selection ranges across luxury goods, fashion, alcohol, and technology, moving from McDonald’s to Dior and beyond.
The imagery brings together artists associated with very different eras and reputations, including Marina Abramović, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, de Chirico, and Dalí. Leguillon describes the project in stark terms: “It’s a collection about art without any art in it.” The foundation’s text frames the series as both “glamorous and banal,” and as a study of how artist personas can accrue cultural capital through advertising, sometimes equal to or greater than the work itself.
The Library gallery will host a new installation of 'The Museum of Mistakes', which Leguillon founded in Brussels in 2013 as a non-hierarchical institution for displaying his collections. The project includes what he calls “the little shop of errors” and brings together printed matter and other eclectic objects, such as exhibition-advertisement bags, posters, printed fabrics, painted Doc Martens, and collections centered on socks. For this presentation, the traveling collection will unfurl as an annexation of the Library.
That installation will accompany a comprehensive presentation of Leguillon’s artist’s books, emphasizing the book as central to his practice. The exhibition text says the display will place original objects beside their printed appearances, considering presentation, historicization, and museological display. It is intended as a “pop-up” in which the book functions as a museum and the museum as a book.
'Pierre Leguillon: Ads & Brands' is co-curated by independent writer and curator Lauren Mackler and MAF Director Hanneke Skerath. Marciano Art Foundation says the exhibition receives support from Villa Albertine, the French Institute for Culture and Education. Leguillon, born in Nogent-sur-Marne, France, in 1969, lives and works in Brussels, and his work has previously been shown at institutions including the Louvre, MAMCO, Moderna Museet, WIELS, the ICA Boston, Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, and the Frye Art Museum.
