ART FAIRS: Paris+ par Art Basel 2023, Part II

Art Basel, together with its parent company MCH Group, have a seven-year contract to stage a new contemporary and Modern art fair at the Grand Palais in Paris. The new project “Paris+ par Art Basel” of international stature build bridges with France’s cultural to create a flagship event that radiates throughout the city and is firmly embedded in Paris and its cultural scene. The second edition of the new fair takes place at the Grand Palais’s temporary venue, the Grand Palais Éphémère, located in the historic heart of Paris on the Champ-de-Mars (Part I).

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Dimitris Lempesis Archive

The second edition of Paris+ par Art Basel brings together 154 galleries from 33 countries, including 61 with an exhibition space in France, will be showing engaging solo, duo, and group presentations of work by French and international artists, from 20th-century masters to emerging voices, at the Grand Palais Éphémère in the following sectors: Galleries: The main sector of the fair will feature 140 of the world’s leading galleries presenting the highest quality of painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, photography, video, editions, and digital works; Galeries Émergentes: Dedicated to emerging galleries from across the globe, Galeries Émergentes will feature 14 focused solo presentations exploring contemporary themes such as the evolving perception of gender, ecology, and the increasing ubiquity of manipulated images. The Galeries Lafayette group is the Official Partner of the Galeries Émergentes sector. One artist from the sector will be chosen to exhibit at Lafayette Anticipations the following year. Paris+ par Art Basel will increase its presence beyond the Grand Palais Éphémère for its second edition, featuring freely accessible artworks and a Conversations program in six storied venues across the French capital. A group exhibition realized in collaboration with the Musée du Louvre, curated by Annabelle Ténèze, presently Director of Les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse and incoming Director of the Louvre-Lens Museum, and titled ‘La cinquième saison’ (‘The fifth season’) will be on view in the Jardin des Tuileries – Domaine National du Louvre. Two new venues will be added to the program: The parvis de l’Institut de France will host a monumental textile sculpture by Sheila Hicks, presented by galerie frank elbaz in collaboration with Meyer Riegger and Massimo Minini; the Palais d’Iéna will host a duo exhibition by Daniel Buren and Michelangelo Pistoletto, curated by art historian Matthieu Poirier and supported by Galleria Continua. Since the 1960s, Daniel Buren has been exploring the relationship between motif and support, as well as form and context. This led him to choose fixed vertical stripes 8.7 cm wide, alternating white with another color, as his exclusive motif, based on an industrial fabric pattern. Starting from this neutral visual register, Buren further impoverished it by systematically repeating it to achieve a ‘zero degree’ of painting. From 1967 onwards, he worked in situ, i.e., making this ‘visual tool’ of stripes interact with the context in which it is displayed, whether natural or man-made (street, gallery, museum, landscape and architecture).  In the mid-1950s, Michelangelo Pistoletto began a pictorial exploration of the self-portrait, followed by the monochrome, using metallic paints. Around 1961-62, this exploration was synthesized, resulting in mirrored paintings, created by collaging a one-size-fits-all image on a polished metal plate. These works offer the viewer both a (fixed) image and a (fleeting) reflection of themselves and the surrounding space. The artist hence inverts the Renaissance perspective and conjures an idea of art in vivo, as a unique, lived experience of real space and time. These ideas are developed in various ways in his equally seminal, 1965-66 work “Ogetti in meno” (‘Objects in less’) and constitute a key moment in Arte Povera. The 17th-century chapel of the Beaux-Arts de Paris will host an exhibition by British artist Jessica Warboys, exploring the overlap between man-made culture and nature. Titled “THIS TAIL GROWS AMONG RUINS”, it will combine a multichannel video and sound installation with a large collage of unstretched paintings. Warboys makes these by following a unique process: She brushes the canvas with beeswax, immerses it in wild bodies of water, and then sprinkles it with mineral pigments on the shores. In her eponymous video work, the artist stages the journey of a candle through various sites where nature and culture intersect, from the Biblioteca Joanina in Coimbra, Portugal – home to a colony of bats that protect its precious manuscripts from insects – to the pine forest surrounding the Arvo Pärt Center in Laulasmaa, Estonia. The video is accompanied by a soundtrack using the amplified sounds of bats, composed by Morten Norbye Halvorsen. The project is presented by Gaudel de Stampa (Paris). A work by Swiss artist Urs Fischer will be exhibited on the Place Vendôme. Titled Wave (2018), it is a five-meter-high aluminum sculpture, based on a mound of clay that was pressed, kneaded, and squeezed by the artist. The piece of clay, bearing the marks of Fischer’s hands, was then enlarged, magnifying the tactile details left on the material.  The work, which resembles a sweltering, glistening wave, reflects the artist’s interest in materiality, scale, and contextual ambiguity. The straightforward process behind the original model of ‘Wave’ is intentionally at odds with its monumental scale, shininess, and placement on a square known for its majestic feel. The project is presented by Gagosian (New York, Basel, London, Los Angeles, Geneva, Hong Kong, Paris, Rome, Basel, Gstaad, Athens). This year’s Conversations program will be realized in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou and take place in its Renzo Piano- and Richard Rogers-designed building, located in the heart of the Marais. Curated for the second year by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou, Conversations will comprise nine talks investigating contemporary cultural discourse. The program will celebrate avant-garde figures such as Chantal Akerman and Antonin Artaud; explore the intersection between art collecting and fashion; shed light on purveyors of contemporary myths, from the Walt Disney Studios to drag culture; explore the connections between Paris, the Maghreb, and the Caribbean; and feature known formats from Art Basel’s Conversations programs, such as the Premiere Artist Talk and The Artist and The Collector.

Photo: Art Paris+ par Art Basel, 2023, Installation view, Photo: © & Courtesy Dimitris Lempesis

Info: Paris+ par Art Basel, 2 place Joffre, Paris, France, Days & Hours: Fri (20/10) 11:00-21:00, Sat (21/10) 11:00-20:00, Sun (22/10) 11:00-19:00, Admission: Full Price Ticket €40, Reduced Price Ticket €27, Reduced Price Ticket €27 (Fri (20/10) from 19:00-21:00 Sat (21/10) from 18:00-20:00, Permanent Ticket €100, https://parisplus.artbasel.com/