MIRAGES XXX
The many years that I’m commuting in Paris and the intervals that I live in the cite are quite large, but I have not experienced before what happened this October. Besides FIAC 2016, where actually was blowing a wind of renewal and modernization and as one of my colleagues noted (I agree completely with her), FIAC 2016 competes with Frieze London 2016 at the level and the quality of artworks, International artists and big galleries. Simultaneously on the antipode the 2nd edition of Paris Internationale, at a hotel built in 1897, organized by a group of young and promising Gallerists like Samy Abraham, whose gallery is located in the emerging area of Bellevile. Those two Art Fairs build slowly and steadily the analogy of Basel-Liste, thus obtaining the city’s art scene enormous interest, as indeed YIA ART FAIR-Paris that is balancing in between, at the same period (20-23 /10/16).
But the most important are the exhibitions on presentation at the city’s Galleries and Museums.
A visual Sunday walk begun from Grand Palais and the exhibition dedicated in the Mexican Avant-Garde (1900-1950), to Jeu de Paume with the exhibition ‘’Soulèvements’’, opposite at Monnaie des Paris with the mini retrospective of Maurizio Catelan, to Maison Européenne de la Photographie at Marais, with a series of ambiguous between them but very interesting exhibitions, lastly “René Magritte-La trahison des images” at Centre George Pompidou. I do not know if was the vertigo of the day, the rain that steadily followed me from Monnaie des Paris in this hike, because Paris deserves to enjoy it by walking in any weather or the different stimuli, however, the need to settle and balance the emotions, thoughts and reflections on the top floor of the Centre George Pompidou in Restaurant George, overlooking the wet Paris with a glass of red wine was almost imperative.
It wasn’t that moment I felt that all this energy brings a renewal in the city, but Tuesday noon when starting from the Marais and Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, were Robert Rauschenberg on the ground floor jousted with Marcel Duchamp on the 1st floor. There I was flooded with a feeling of despair because after this start, I did not knew how or where to move (?) I had left and passed timidly the next door of Galerie Karsten Greve, where another surprise awaited me, the exhibitions “Time and Tide” by the Scottish artist Georgia Russell and “Matter as Medium” the first solo exhibition in France of the Indian artist Manish Nai, that already knew his work from the Article in our magazine. Fortunately the staff of the gallery, with whom we have business contact, and the conversations that we exchanged, was a pleasant interval, so I was able to assimilate all these stimuli and the combined images with flooded me. Takashi Murakami at Galerie Perottin, old and new artworks, the same exciting and dazzling as exactly the same with the exhibition “A Different Kind of Woman” with works by Tom Wesselmann at Almine Rech Gallery. Didier Fiuza Faustino at Michel Rein Paris and Andisheh Avini at galerie frank elbaz, with two completely different body of works, the first minimal at edge between art and design and the second an impressive modern look of the history of Persia, reinstated me in actuality to finish my tour in rue de Turenne. In the same concept, but with pop mood is the exhibition “Marilola” by Beatriz Milhazes at Galerie Max Hetzler, while the photographs from the series “Cathedral of the Pines” by the well-known Gregory Crewdson at Galerie Daniel Templon. The epilogue of a visual walk, the thread of which we will unfold throughout the month through our magazine, in a Paris that vibrates is the exhibition by Philippe Ramette at Xippas Gallery and at next door the exhibition “RESPECT” by Michelangelo Pistoletto at the new space of VNH Gallery (108 rue Vieille du Temple). Is Paris an Art Metropolis? What else have Metropolises that does not have Paris?
Good Month (!)
Efi Michalarou
1/11/16