We'll Always Have... Art Fairs
17 rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, Paris
Paris Internationale
October 16th to 20th, 2024
If you’ve been reading the art and culture press over the last few weeks, you might have noticed some of the hullabaloo about ‘London vs Paris’ in the battle for art world supremacy, which is being treated like it's the Napoleonic wars or something. Essentially, the big news is that Art Basel Paris has landed at the newly renovated Grand Palais, hot on the heels of Frieze in London as a ‘rival’ mega-fair. And alongside the glitz and glam of the main event, Paris is putting on a real show of headline exhibitions and buzzy art fairs.
Paris internationale is one of the latter. It’s being held in Le central téléphonique Bergère, a former telephone exchange and office building on rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, which has been totally gutted. It’s a fabulously raw space, a little redolent of the chipped concrete and flux of the Palais de Tokyo, and there are five floors of art here, linked by a load of freshly painted ersatz staircases. They’re aware of the accessibility challenges this might cause some visitors, so if this is an issue you can contact them to see how best they can accommodate you.
The ‘city of light’ is a cliché, but one of the joys of the naturally-lit rooms hosting many of the shows here this week is the more human feel you get from shifting patterns of light on and around works of art. It was no different at Paris Internationale, with sunshine falling in from the big open windows rather than being diffused through tent canvas like Frieze, and the fact you can escape out onto the top floor balcony offers a literal breath of fresh air (or blueberry vape smoke).
There’s a lot to see with over 75 galleries from 19 countries, but Bonnie Lucas at ILY2 is unmissable. The Portland based gallery has brought a series of works by the New York City artist to Paris. With intricate, sensual, dark explorations of femininity in assemblages of fabrics and objects, Lucas takes the pinks and whites of girlhood and twists them softly through the wringer.
Best known as a fashion designer, Dirk Van Saene is one of the famed Antwerp Six and could have stopped there, but then the world wouldn’t get to see his fabulous sculptures, which Gallery Sofie Van de Velde has brought over from Belgium. They span big emotional ranges, but sit stuffed and white and mute, often in pensive devastation.
Berlin gallery Kow is showing 3D printed wood pulp sculptures by CATPC (Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise). The Congolese collective features at this year’s Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which I loved when I saw it in April, and these new works are just as rawly devastating.
American artist Violet Dennison’s big flower canvases blend digital art and physical painting in an uncanny way. Gallerist Ilenia Rossi explained the mix of vinyl process and robotically drawn lines which leaves weird depths from afar, and quirky surface shifts up close. Ilenia is also exhibiting works from Aaron Angel – wild ceramic flower sculptures fired in a specialist kiln in Oxford that produces weird glazing effects from the combustion of different elements during the process.
Floral is a bit of a theme here. Artist Javier Barrios at Luduvico Corsini offers up lush drawings and watercolours (some on old botanical display boxes) of creepy/sexy Disney Fantasia-inspired orchids and other blooms. And there are fabric flowers and surreal ceramics by Wendy Cabrera Rubio at Anonymous gallery.
Asma is an artist duo formed by Matias Armendaris (Ecuador) and Hanya Beliá (Mexico) who live and work in Mexico City. Their work blends different forms to heady effect, with canvases layered with psychedelic dribbles of white silicone into sort of relief paintings. Other paintings are cradled in intricate metalwork standing frames or sit behind twisted art deco silver-plated brass gates.
If you like this kind of thing (I definitely do!), then you’ll probably also enjoy Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg’s works at GNG’s booth, which offers up giant metallic sculpture and funky 3D paintings. Belgian Amber Andrews was another discovery with her memento mori ceramics at Ciaccia Levi (they have a full show of her paintings up now in Milan until 15 Nov).
Art fairs of late have seemed very photography-light to me, and that’s understandable when there are major events like Paris Photo coming up (back in the Grand Palais, and just around the corner in early November). But I loved the sensitive and sensual work by the late Greek photographer George Tourkovasilis on show at RECORDS. Chinese-Spanish artist Yun Ping’s photo works are being shown by San Sebastian’s Cibrián, exploring the intersection of Asian and European influences through black and white and colour work that brings to mind Francesca Woodman (among others). Sveta Mordovskaya also blends photography and sculpture in her work at King’s Leap.
There’s a lot more to see including big sensual portraiture by Vojtěch Kovařík, emotive paintings and sculptures by Julian Farade, and spiky-smooth woodwork by Mathilde Albouy at Galerie Derouillon, all of which was created especially for the show.
The fair is free (you just need to register for a timeslot beforehand here) and runs until this Sunday at 6pm, so if you’re in Paris or on your way there, then don’t miss it.
Bonus content - shout out to Allie at ILY2 for this fine piece of neckwear (it’s Schiaparelli 💅, but she says she’s now worked out how to make them by herself out of old extensions).
