Song Dong’s Mirrored Universe at Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche “A personal journey through art, light, and reflection”. Story by RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Bon Marché Rive Gauche.

Stepping into Le Bon Marché this January is like entering a dream constructed from memory, poetry, and light. For its 11th artist invitation, the storied department store becomes a living artwork — shaped and imagined by renowned Chinese conceptual artist Song Dong. Titled Objets divers et variés – 百货 (bǎihuò), this project is not simply an exhibition. It is a universe built from objects, windows, chandeliers, and countless reflections.

The most astonishing moment unfolds on the second floor, where a massive kaleidoscope installation quietly waits. Eight meters long, three meters wide — constructed from salvaged windows and floor-to-ceiling mirrors — it draws you in like a portal. Once inside, you are entirely surrounded by light, by echoes, by shifting geometries. The store disappears. Only you remain, multiplied, softened, suspended.

“I want to offer an experience where what we will see and smell will be impossible to transfer to a screen,” Song Dong said. And he succeeded. Nothing digital could replace the stillness of that mirrored space, the warmth of the hanging lamps, or the strange serenity of seeing yourself reflected endlessly in such an environment.

Elsewhere in the store, the transformation continues. The iconic windows of Rue de Sèvres, Rue de Babylone, and Rue du Bac have become theatrical stages, each one carefully filled with everyday objects chosen for their personal histories — many loaned by customers and store staff. “Each object has a personal story,” said Frédéric Bodenes, who has worked with Song Dong on this collaboration since 2019. The result is intimate and powerful: a visual diary made of porcelain, radios, tea sets, old telephones, and record players — all gently illuminated and reflected in mirrored displays.

Song Dong describes the entire work as a mandala — something built, dismantled, and reimagined over time. “All the objects in this project have had a previous life and will take on a new state of being, a new appearance. Like the mandala, they will have multiple lives,” he said. That sense of continuation, of softness and grace in transformation, is felt everywhere.

Even the store’s central escalator becomes part of the story. Two immense chandeliers made from illuminated white bottles — a nod to Marcel Duchamp’s bottle rack — now float above shoppers like surreal relics of Paris’s artistic past. “I take ownership of this work by transforming it into a chandelier and therefore give it a functional purpose,” the artist said.

These chandeliers, hovering between sculpture and memory, feel perfectly at home in Le Bon Marché’s glass-canopied heart. There is no division between the store and the installation. Every corner — from the dioramas to the silk curtains patterned with windowpanes — invites you to pause. It doesn’t matter whether you arrived to shop or to see art. As Song Dong puts it, “This exhibition gives the opportunity to switch identity.” You might come as a visitor and leave as a participant. You might arrive as a customer and walk away quietly transformed.

This is not an exhibition you view. It’s something you feel. A rare kind of beauty lives here — humble, generous, and unforgettable.

See Song Dong’s Mirrored Universe at Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche