Bienvenue, l'automne!
Just as the days start to grow shorter and temperatures drop in New York, I’m off to Europe to experience a brand new art fair in arguably the best season, and, incidentally, the best city for art at the moment. Paris is reclaiming its prominence as a premiere destination for galleries, collectors, and enthusiasts. London has lost a bit of luster due to Brexit; seasoned galleries are now decamping to the continent or routing more resources into their Parisian locations. With the introduction of Art Basel’s newest venture, Paris+, the city of lights gains a prestigious global art fair and stature on the art scene. This is not to say that London is to be forgotten; Frieze is guaranteed to delight this October as it does every year. But I recommend you book the Eurostar to Paris straight after for the pièce de résistance.
FAIR DETAILS
Frieze London + Frieze Masters: The Regents Park, London, NW1 4LL
Wednesday, October 12 – Sunday, October 16
Paris+ par Art Basel: Grand Palais Éphémère, 2 place Joffre, 75007, Paris
Wednesday, October 19 – Sunday, October 23
LONDON
Ugo Rondinone, yellow blue monk, 2020, presented by Gladstone. Frieze Sculpture 2022. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.
Assembled on the grounds outside of the Frieze fair is this year’s installment of Frieze Sculpture: a free, immersive experience that showcases towering forms from an international cohort of artists that includes Beverly Pepper, John Giorno, Ugo Rondinone, and Alicja Kwade. The artworks make tangible themes of gender, community, and uncertainty; their materiality allows viewers to ponder these heady concepts through striking visual displays of shape and text.
Alicja Kwade, Tunnel - Tell (Ceci Sera), 2020, presented by KÖNIG GALLERIE & PACE Gallery. Frieze Sculpture 2022. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.
The fairs are a short walk away from the delights of Marylebone High Street. Boutiques and cafés abound, making it a destination in its own right and a perfect stop for coffee or lunch before you visit The Regent’s Garden grounds. Save enough time to browse the cozy stacks of Daunt Books, specializing in literary fiction, non-fiction, and travel guides, and be sure to pop into Hagen nearby for a specialty coffee and a pastry. For a more traditional dining experience, The Ivy Café has a location on Marylebone Lane.
PARIS
Manuel Mathieu, Unmade, 2022 Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
The excitement is building for the inaugural Paris+ par Art Basel fair, which will bring together galleries displaying the best in modern and contemporary art with those championing emerging practitioners. Over 150 galleries will exhibit at the fair, so there’s a lot to see – I’m curious to see the interior organization of the Grand Palais Éphémère, and just how beautifully it showcases all of the art! Outside of the hall will be the Sites sector: four iconic cultural locations in central Paris to bring the fair into the city. The Jardin des Tuileries – Domaine national du Louvre, Place Vendôme, musée national Eugène-Delacroix and Chapelle des Petits-Augustins des Beaux-Arts de Paris will all host site-specific installations by Thaddeus Mosley, Nina Beier, Omer Fast, and others. There are also unmissable shows at the city’s museums and exhibition spaces open at the same time as the fair – I’ve highlighted several that I’m most interested in seeing, but it was difficult to choose. My advice is to try and catch as many as you can.
Jessy Razafimandimby, du thé au bout des lèvres, 2022
Courtesy the artist and sans titre, Paris
PARIS GALLERIES & MUSEUMS
Carol Bove, Hardware Romance, 2021 (detail). © Carol Bove. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
Carol Bove at David Zwirner
The celebrated sculptor had two very notable exhibitions last year—at the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art—in addition to a very popular display at Frieze New York this past spring. The composition of “Vase/Face” is four large works and three smaller wall pieces (if you attended Frieze NY, they might look a bit familiar) in stainless steel, yet the artist renders them so carefully that they appear less rigid and more malleable – the play on perspective is at the heart of this show. The interplay of steel and glass, figure and ground, all produce the illusion of a different scale, environment, or reality. Bove challenges the viewer to question what it is she is actually seeng by means of dramatic sculptural effects.
Vue d'exposition, LOVE LIFE, 2022, Galerie Sultana, Paris. © Gregory Copitet
P. Staff at Galerie Sultana “Time, death, language, light, violence.” These are the themes that influence interdisciplinary artist P. Staff’s body of work – they are not for the faint of heart. Crossing the boundaries of installation, film, and multimedia, the artist dives deep into the biopolitical underpinnings of contemporary life, divulging that which seeks to heal us may indeed be harmful to us. For their current exhibition “Love Life,” Staff coats photographs in resin (a material that is highly toxic in its liquid form), litters wine bottles filled with synthetic gastric fluids across the gallery, and hangs photograms of surgical instruments in precise grid formations. The artworks show how painful it can be to keep on living, or how living wholly exemplifies the pleasure/pain dichotomy. Prepare for often uncomfortable truths from a prescient artist who was a part of this year’s Venice Biennale.
Luigi Ontani, Dante, 1972, Matte color print © Rome, Fabio Sargentini, Archivio L’Attico © Luigi Ontani
Italy in the post-war period was an extremely fertile time for artists given to working with non-traditional materials and/or methods. Arte povera (“poor art”), as it had come to be known, was highly conceptual, experimental, and fomented a break in the conventional ways art was made, marketed, and sold. This group exhibition focuses on the interplay of image-making within a modern context in all of its iterations: the representation of the real in both static and dynamic ways through photography and time-based media. Visitors can expect to be dazzled by the achievements of members from the original avant-garde group, such as Giuseppe Penone, Alighiero Boetti, and Marisa Merz, alongside contemporary artists who have used the canonical works as fodder for their own practices.
Zoe Leonard, Al Río / To The River, 2016-2022 Courtesy the artist, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Hauser & Wirth, New York
Zoe Leonard at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
This exhibition documents a journey into the political, social, and ecological relationship between the USA and Mexico, simultaneously fraught and beautiful. Leonard captured hundreds of images during her travels along this aquatic border—known as the Rio Grande in the United States and the Rio Bravo in Mexico—and uncovered the nuances of community, exclusion, surveillance, commerce, and conservation in this region. “The shifting nature of a river – which floods periodically, changes course and carves new channels – is at odds with the political task it is asked to perform,” says Leonard. The artist’s practice rests on its conceptual core, as she often probes ideas surrounding migration, displacement, and landscape in her photographs, sculptures, and installations.
Anri Sala, Time No Longer, 2021 Courtesy Pinault Collection
Anri Sala at Bourse de Commerce (Pinault Collection)
Sala’s recent installation is poised to fit seamlessly into the curved architecture of the Bourse de Commerce. Time No Longer (2021) combines film and sound to immerse the viewer/listener in the spatial qualities of the gallery; how the sound echoes and reverberates in the room working in tandem with light and shadow. The artist crafts a sonic adventure through use of a historical arrangement: “Quartet for the End of Time,” composed in captivity during World War II by French musician Olivier Messiaen. The focus of Sala’s piece is on the quartet’s solo movement, rousing thoughts of solitude, isolation, detachment, and emptiness – and how one might become re-embodied after a period of profound loneliness.
ALSO RECOMMENDED:
Monet-Mitchell at Fondation Louis Vuitton
Tavares Strachan at Marian Goodman
Giuseppe Penone at Centre Pompidou
Alice Neel at Centre Pompidou
Mickalene Thomas at Musée de l’Orangerie
Cyprien Gaillard at Palais de Tokyo Le Marais (3rd arrondissement) is home to some of Paris’ best galleries, and is also a destination for boutique shopping and cuisine. Take time to explore one of my favorite concept stores, Merci, with interesting installations and a curated selection of home and ready to wear. For a traditional French lunch after a gallery day, try Chez Janou. Or, after a walk through the Tuileries, try Lou Lou where the view is glorious and a reservation is highly recommended. It’s Paris, so wherever you decide to dine, it is sure to be a delight. Follow @annebruderart on Instagram for the near finissage of the Venice Biennale, Paris highlights and more!