Cover image: Signage for Echo Delay Reverb
© Entrée to Black Paris

On Thursday, October 23, 2025, two enormous exhibitions opened in the Palais de Tokyo as the art center renews its carte blanche format with a project conceived by Naomi Beckworth, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.

Melvin Edwards takes a look at the 60-year career of sculptor Melvin Edwards.

The Houston, TX-born artist is best known for his large-scale abstract sculptures, such as Augusta and Felton, and his Lynch Fragments. Both bear witness to his love of metalwork and welding.

Augusta, 1974
Melvin Edwards
Painted steel
© Entrée to Black Paris

Felton, 1974
Melvin Edwards
Painted steel
© Entrée to Black Paris

Lynch Fragments is a series of wall-mounted assemblages of welded industrial objects and materials.

Lynch Fragments series
Melvin Edwards
© Entrée to Black Paris

In his interview with curator Amandine Nana, Edwards describes them as representing "the social and political reality that my family and I had lived through."  He made a conscious decision to keep the works between 12 and 18 inches in diameter and have them hung at eye level, "as if looking at a face." 

Kasangadila: For Francisco Romão de Oliveira e Silva (Lynch Fragment), 2004
Melvin Edwards
Welded steel
© Entrée to Black Paris

The exhibition also includes monumental outdoor sculptures, installations built with barbed wire and chains, and several prints and watercolors displayed in a small room adjacent to them.

Homage to the Poet Leon-Gontran Damas, 1978-1981
Melvin Edwards
Steel, in five parts
© Entrée to Black Paris

Lines for the Poet, 1970
Melvin Edwards
Barbed wire and stainless steel
© Entrée to Black Paris

Watercolors
Melvin Edwards
© Entrée to Black Paris

Several works in the show represent Edwards' collaborations with writers such as Edouard Glissant, Léon-Gontran Damas, and Jayne Cortez.

In 1970, Edwards was the first African-American sculptor to receive a solo show at the Whitney Museum in New York. He currently works in Baltimore, New York, and Dakar.

A door at the right side of the curved room in which Edwards' work is displayed leads to Echo Delay Reverb: American Art, Francophone Thought—an expansive and eclectic show that "retraced how Francophone critical thought electrified American universities and the art scene from the 1970s onward."

Entrance to Echo Delay Reverb
© Entrée to Black Paris

Curated by Naomi Beckwith, this exhibition  brings together the work of ~60 creatives to shine a light on how art in the United States became a driving force for revolutionary thought, inspiring writers, artists, and activists—to challenge boundaries and reimagine the world.

It connects the ideas of thinkers whose work continues to shape conversations about identity, freedom, and resistance. When these ideas reached the U.S., they were transformed in unexpected ways, sparking new creative movements that questioned both social and artistic institutions. 

Among the Black writers and philosophers cited in the exhibition are Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Roussi-Césaire, Edouard Glissant, and Franz Fanon.

Photo of Aimé Césaire and Suzanne Roussi-Césaire
"Non-human Geographies" section of Echo Delay Reverb
© Entrée to Black Paris

All artistic media are represented in the exhibition, including paintings, videos, and sound installations.

A singular work by Glenn Ligon features a passage from James Baldwin's essay, "Stranger in the Village."

Mirror #4, 2006
Glenn Ligon
Silkscreen, coal dust, acrylic, and oil stick on canvas

For me, the most unique work was a "candy spill" by Félix Gonzales -Torres, which consisted of a pile of individually wrapped licorice candies placed in a corner of one of the rooms in the "Dispersion, dissemination" section of the exhibition.

Visitors are invited to take candies from the pile, thereby "activating" the work and contributing to its dispersion.

Untitled (Public Opinion), 1991
Félix Gonzales -Torres
Black licorice candies individually wrapped in cellophane

To round out her carte blanche project, Beckwith commissioned a mural that accompanies the Melvin Edwards and Echo Delay Reverb exhibitions.

Within the Veil, A Grammar by Caroline Kent is displayed on either side of the central staircase in the free access entrance hall. It is an abstract work with some three-dimensional elements that is described as imagining "a cryptic language with its own grammar, syntax, punctuation, and diacritical marks" and "reconnecting with abstraction's aspirations to create a language that is both unique and universal."

Within the Veil, A Grammar, 2025
Caroline Kent
Multimedia mural

Melvin Edwards, Echo Delay Reverb, Within the Veil, and A Grammar will be on display through February 25, 2026.

To learn more and purchase tickets, click HERE.