ART FAIRS:Paris Photo 2018,Part I

Paris Photo is the world’s largest Art Fair of photography, and is held annually since 1997 in the Grand Palais, Paris. The 22nd edition of the Art Fair hosts 199 exhibitors from across the world, presenting both historical and contemporary works. Renowned for its innovative and high-level programming, Paris Photo is a key event for collectors and art world professionals, as well as photography enthusiasts (Part II).

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Paris Photo Archive

In Paris Photo 2018 participate 168 galleries and 31 art book dealers throughout 5 sectors. In the nave and are on presentation 39 solo & duo exhibition, 14 projects in the PRISMES sector dedicated to series, large-formats and installations in the Salon d’Honneur, artist films featured in Film sector at the m2k Grand Palais cinéma, and the new thematic sector which this year unveils a selection of images focusing on the body, gender and eroticism in photography. Among the solo shows, Jorma Puranen in “Memorandum of Loss” highlights the material nature of photography. Using archive material, he studies surface reflections, shadows, brushstrokes and cracks. With his new series Memorandum of Loss, Puranen pursues his interest in disappearance and loss. Over the years, he has collected old photographs, negatives and other visual materials that he has found in flea markets and archives and which he has processed, re-photographed and re-printed. Grown from his previous transformations of historical art works, these new works form an imaginary collection: a ghostly encyclopaedia. Historical visuals of Arctic exploration allow Puranen to form a national narrative. Focusing on failed expeditions he creates alternative fictive interpretations of history and challenges our sense of time and space. With Jorma Puranen, the photographic medium opens to new readings of iconic landscapes and stories, offering cultural identity a renewed contemporary resonance. In the duo shows the rediscovery of Marie-Jo Lafontaine, one of the leading figures of Belgium photography, whose work has not been shown in France since many years, via a series of unpublished works of a topic that is very dear to her: flower still life. In parallel, will be exposed one of the promising young talents of the German photographic scene, Felix Dobbert, with a series that questions the current status of photography. Another highlight is the new project by François-Xavier Gbré and Yo-Yo Gonthier, that is a continuation of their earlier proposal entitled “The Courtyard”. A project that they have imagined together and they wish to be nomadic, evolutionary and collaborative. In 2018 the “The Courtyard” takes place in an old cinema of Bamako, place of all the possible, of all the imaginaries, a window overlooking the world. In a particularly difficult politico-military context since 2012, François-Xavier Gbré and Yo-Yo Gonthier question: Which projections for Malian youth? What happened to all the yesterday’s dreams? Skinned, decrepit, like the walls on which they operate. Gathered around a proposal questioning freedom of expression, history, art and politics, these two artists underline the need to listen to each other, to discuss, to share, to not forget and to make a common thought exist. Akio Nagasawa Gallery presents a show of eight artists, whose works ranging from 1960s to the present day, explores intrinsic and essential scene in Japan. Miyajima and Suda take human being and come close to it. Tadao Ando and Daido Moriyama take cityscape and scenes of life in a town. Kanoh Tenmei and Masao Mochizuki / show scenes in tumultuous time. Ishiguro and Nomura see a sentimental view of Japan. Each artist can show various aspect of the country, Japan in different eras. Richard Saltoun Gallery presents a curated stand of works by international Feminist artists working in the 1970s, with a focus on Britain’s most important feminist photographer Jo Spence. The selected artists, (Renate Bertlmann, Elisabetta Catalano and Penny Slinger) have used the body as a point of reference for expressing political and aesthetic issues, pushing the boundaries of artistic expression through their use of photography. Feminist pioneers like Renate Bertlmann, Gina Pane, Suzy Lake, and Penny Slinger used the camera to document their iconic performances that broke traditional conventions of representation, gender, and performance. The PRISMES sector dedicates to the exploration of the photographic medium in its most diverse forms and practices. Emphasis is given to series, installations and exceptional large-format rarely seen in their entirety, presented to offer visitors a unique experience. Uche Okpa-Iroha uses his photographs to raise awareness with the public and policy makers on socio economic and political issues. The “Plantation Boy” project consists of 40 images that collectively examine the power structures of race and the hegemony of Western culture. The title evokes the black and African quest for freedom and self-determination that arose in the slave plantation era and continues to impact the lives of black subjects globally. In “Plantation Boy”, Okpa-Iroha meticulously places himself in the frame of the image, through strategies of reconstruction and reenactment. The artist intervenes in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 Hollywood movie, The Godfather, by isolating and appropriating forty original film stills from the seminal movie. Through a process of digital reconstruction,the artist disrupts an iconic Hollywood image with the presence of an African man amongst the familial gangs of an Italian-American subculture. For its first edition, CURIOSA Sector is curated by independent curator and writer, Martha Kirszenbaum. Through a selection of 14 projects, the curator encourages the visitor to question its own gaze over the fantasized and fetishized body; tackling relations of power and domination, and gender issues. Archival and vernacular photographs, photomontage, self-portraits or mise-en-scène are diverse processes that are presented by varying generations of artists. The founding works of Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki and Robert Mapplethorpe anchor the sector in a historical perspective of the representation of eroticism through fetish and sexual domination, similarly evoked in the archival contact sheets by American photographer Charles Hovland documenting the hidden fantasies of Village Voice readers. The classical and stereotyped representation of the erotized female body and the deconstructed male gaze is also questioned in artworks by avant-garde feminists, Natalia LL and Renate Bertlmann. In contrast, male artists Antoine d’Agata and Károly Halász disclose a fragmented masculinity and weakened male body. Other series redefine the presence of the body through the prism of gender and race. For its second edition, the Film Sector offers a series of films questioning the relationship between still image and the animated image in artistic creation. The film sector highlights the relationship between still and moving images in artistic creation and includes film projects proposed by 2018 exhibitors and selections from the Cnap collection and the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. The Platform is an experimental forum held in the Grand Palais Auditorium on the upper level. Over the course of four days, a series of conversations is led by invited guests along diverse axes, in presence of professionals of the sector, including several photographers.

Info: Paris Photo 2018, Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, Paris, Duration: 8-11/11/18, Hours: Thu-Sat (8-10/11) 12:00-20:00, Sun (11/11) 12:00-19:00, Admission: Week Day 30€, Week End 32€, Reduced Rate 15€, www.parisphoto.com