This post was originally published on artnews.com
The art world is still flush from Paris fever, with international galleries vying for a foothold in the City of Light, particularly since Brexit in 2016 and the arrival of Art Basel Paris three years ago. Now added to this week’s fete are several new satellite fairs and expanded, hybrid selling exhibitions.
From Thursday to Sunday, the US-based New Art Dealer’s Alliance is partnering with local artist-run organization The Community for “Salon by NADA and The Community.” The hybrid, must-see selling exhibition OFFSCREEN has expanded, welcoming Marian Goodman gallery for the first time with a special Chantal Ackermann project, and the Place des Vosges in the Maris is hosting an informal grouping of eight pop-up galleries, including Chris Sharp Gallery, and Corbet vs. Dempsey, to name a few. Not to be forgotten, the mainstay Paris Internationale fair is celebrating a decade since its founding.
With so many events over such a densely-packed week, comes the inevitable question of whether the Paris pie is big enough to go around. Yet from what ARTnews has been hearing, for now, the answer is a resounding, yes.
“I absolutely think there’s room for all of it,” Lowell Pettit, a New York-based art advisor at the Association of Professional Art Advisors told ARTnews. “If the economics are there, from the point of view of our responsibility to our clients, it’s required reading” to attend just about every satellite event. “It’s fascinating the number of different options and experiences … It just means more voices, more artists and more venues in which to experience art.”
Galleries too, are eager. Silvia Ammon, director of Paris Internationale, told ARTnews she has never received so many requests to join the fair—400 applications for 75 spots. This, despite smaller and midsized galleries struggling amid ever rising operating costs and a down market. “It’s been a really difficult year for the whole art market, and young galleries in particular, but I had no withdrawals. I feel a very strong desire to be in Paris and for this week in October,” she said.
Asked if she was at all uneasy about competing with newcomers like NADA, Ammon quickly brushed aside any concerns. After all, Paris Internationale was created because the city lacked international attention, and she, along with other galleries and founding organizers built the fair as an alternative to the former Fiac, which, as Ammon put it diplomatically, “wasn’t on the top of the list,” for art world travelers.
“Paris [in 2015] wasn’t the same city it is today. We were frustrated that our colleagues and galleries … were not that interested in coming [here],” Ammon said. “We wanted to bring in foreigners and offer something else, a platform, to the emerging Parisian scene.”
Paris Internationale, along with other satellite fairs, also serve a real need, because Art Basel simply cannot take on all the many deserving galleries that don’t make the cut. Ten years on, it would be an understatement to say that Paris Internationale’s efforts have paid off. The non-profit has become known for showcasing emerging and smaller galleries, often in unusual, locations, and holding onto its community-focused model without significantly expanding. That stellar eputation is what drew Peres Projects’ founder Javier Peres to the fair. A regular at Art Basel, Peres decided to show at Paris Internationale for the first time this year. The fair is being held, like last year, in a bare-bones multi-story building in Paris’s Grands Boulevards neighborhood that feels like a stripped construction site. Peres has one of the fair’s best booths, with a duo presentation of paintings and collages by Daniele Toneatti, alongside epoxy resin figurative sculptures by Rebecca Ackroyd.
“It’s been amazing. Great people, organization, and frankly, more affordable,” Peres said. “The market is not ideal at the moment, and costs keep going up.” Peres added that he made several sales on the first day and met almost all new clients. Nevertheless, selling sculptures was particularly challenging, and there was “still work to do.”
Elsewhere at Paris Internationale, Portland, Oregon’s ILY2 presented fabric and collage pieces by 75-year-old artist Bonnie Lucas, which were made as far back as the ’70s. Senior director Jeanine Jablonski and gallery founder Allie Furlotti told ARTnews that Lucas has not yet received due recognition, as she was an outlier to feminist movements for much of her career and produced a highly feminine, over-the-top, bejeweled and pink-filled aesthetic. The first day of the fair was busy, they said, and some sales were made, but they were still hoping to connect with institutions.
“I’ve wanted us to be in Europe,” Jablonski said. “And this fair is a lot about community and care, in the way that we operate. It feels very aligned.”
Nearby at the former Baccarat Factory and Museum, exhibitors reported strong sales at the new Salon by NADA and The Community. The light-filled and airy building features lush atriums and labyrinths of raised walkways and rooms looking out and into each other. Guests and exhibitors alike were wowed by the venue.
The talk of the Salon was a joint booth by Mitchell-Innes & Nash and 52 Walker, a David Zwirner offshoot in Tribeca, directed by Ebony L. Haynes. They are showing a moving presentation of works by Pope.L (1955-2023) titled, You Are What You Eat, which explores themes of race, the types of food eaten by the poor, and social epithets. His broken columns of disintegrating mayonnaise jars stacked in wooden, casket-like boxes were sold to an institution, along with other works, by the first day.
“We wanted to have Pope.L’s work seen in France and by museums in Europe,” dealer Lucy Mitchell-Innes told ARTNews, adding that curators and institutions have visited “from everywhere.”
NADA’s executive director, Heather Hubbs, told ARTnews that Paris was the city most requested by the organization’s member galleries for a fair. While NADA was responsible for bringing some 36 galleries, The Community invited 16 non-profits. And despite feeling there is ample room for newcomers to join the Paris party, Hubbs said they wanted to “honor” and be respectful of setting up an event near the more established Paris Internationale.
“We’d love to think that we can work in collaboration with Paris Internationale,” said Hubbs. “I hope that relationship can get stronger over time. We definitely reached out to them and let them know we were coming. We didn’t want it to be a surprise and wanted to respect that.” She also felt each project has a unique offering, and that there was little risk of duplicated experiences. “Paris Internationale’s context is great, but we’re also going to have a great context and it’s going to feel different,” she said.
The costs of booths are about the same for both fair models, and dealers didn’t appear to hesitate much between showing at one or the other. Being new has its disadvantages though. On several occasions locals told ARTnews they hadn’t known about Salon. To that point, Margot Samel of the eponymous New York gallery, said she had not met any Parisians on Salon’s first day, but still managed to sell out her booth of ultra-realist, delicate “nocturnal” paintings by Philadelphia-based artist Olivia Jia (priced between $7,000 and $19,500).
There was a palpable sense of excitement at OFFSCREEN, held in several floors of the Grand Garage Haussmann. A former parking lot, the venue had 28 solo presentations wound around the car park ramp, with each artist personally selected by artistic director Julien Frydman, who, through his vision, has created one of the most immersive, moving art experiences of the entire week. Maybe even the year.
Almost immediately as one enters, a massive, site-specific film installation by Argentinian artist Andrés Denegri, holds the viewer—and listener—in their tracks with Clamor (Uproar) (2012-2024). In the piece, which is a kind of clanking-and-whirring projector, Victorian-dressed men and women flood out of what may be a factory and disappear into a billowing flag of Argentina on several screens arranged on a massive scaffolding. Film strips wind and spin over and around the structure, which includes beams, old Super 8s and newer projectors. One of them literally burns a film strip in parts; eventually the entire reel will be destroyed. Argentina’s Rolf Art is presenting the piece, which is priced at around $108,000. The gallery said a European institution had expressed interest in acquiring the work.
Frydman told ARTnews that he selected works that were made with a lens—whether that be mechanical or digital. That delineation is a little hard to pin down—there are also works on canvas and sculpture—and it’s a tribute to the strength of the work and the unique venue that the show is as successful as it is. Frydman added that he wanted to host a selling exhibition that didn’t feel overcrowded, echoing a sentiment at other recent satellite fairs like Hong Kong’s Supper Club or Basel Social Club.
“Any person who wants to buy art can be welcome and can welcome the artwork,” Frydman said. “It’s a very selfish approach, where I want to be able to receive the art, see the work, and share it.”