Art Paris is celebrating its 25^th anniversary with an edition that will bring together some 134 galleries from 25 different countries at the Grand Palais Éphémère. Doors are open to the public from 30 March to 2 April 2023.

This contemporary art fair – which was founded in 1999 – has become a leading spring arts event, an innovative get-together that fosters discovery, setting out to explore in depth the world of modern and contemporary art.

This year, the fair is dealing with two themes dealing with notions of commitment and exile. “Art and Commitment: A Focus on the French Scene” – Independent exhibition curator Marc Donnadieu shares his perspective on the French scene with a selection of 20 artists from different generations exhibited by this edition’s galleries.

“Exile: Dispossession and Resistance” – This theme has been entrusted to independent exhibition curator and founder of the Beirut-based TAP (Temporary Art Platform), Amanda Abi Khalil. It shines a spotlight on a selection of 18 international artists chosen from the exhibiting galleries whose work addresses questions in relation to exile.

There ar some great gallery shows in Paris during Art Paris that you definitely should not miss!

Carsten Höller “Clocks” at Gagosian Gallery

An exhibition of new and rarely seen earlier works by Carsten Höller. Occupying the gallery at rue de Castiglione and the exterior-facing vitrine at rue de Ponthieu, the exhibition focuses on how the measurement of time impacts human ways of being.

Höller applies scientific procedures to his work as an artist with playful and sometimes dark humour. Many of the projects that comprise his Laboratory of Doubt–from twisting slides to vision-flipping goggles—incorporate disorienting experiences to be conducted on oneself.

Bernard Venet “Dipheomorphism and Discontinuity” at Perrotin Gallery

Diffeomorphism and Discontinuity marks a new collaboration of the gallery with Bernar Venet, a leading figure in contemporary sculpture and a pioneer of conceptual art. The exhibition showcases the full range of his prolific oeuvre combining sculptures, reliefs, paintings, drawings, and engravings. Presented across the three spaces of Perrotin, this major event is a celebration of one of the most important artists of his generation, featuring recent works never before exhibited in Paris

Franz West at David Zwirner Gallery

This exhibition surveys a range of West’s sculptures, works on paper, and installations produced between the late 1970s and early 2000s. Franz West is well known for his abstract, painted papier-mâché and plaster forms that rest on unusual supports, like the Passstücke. These were intended by the artist as an invitation to the viewer, in this case on an intellectual level, thereby calling attention to the larger context of the exhibition and the way in which viewers interact with works of art and one another. Many of the works on view incorporate furniture elements, another important leitmotif of West’s oeuvre, which further allowed him to create a space for visitors to rest and reflect on the artwork and their experience of it, again privileging social interaction as a central component of his work.

Susumu Kamijo “The Sun Inside” at Perrotin Gallery

Perrotin Gallery presents the first exhibition of New York- based Japanese artist Susumu Kamijo in Paris. For the occasion, the artist will showcase a new series of paintings exploring the psychology of the canine. The dog (canis lupus familiaris) is an ambiguous creature. In ancient Egypt, it was considered a psychopomp, a soul guide, leading the dead to paradise when it was not guarding the gates of hell. Domesticated, altered, and transformed, it nonetheless remains unpredictable today, its primal needs reminding us of this sick nature that threatens us with pandemics and climate change. Initially a hunting dog, the poodle gradually became a pet and then an accessory, exhibited in portraits as a symbol of luxury and fidelity.

Chris Hood “Thought Forms” at Praz-Dellavallade Gallery

This is an exhibition of new paintings by Chris Hood – and it is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Hood’s most recent body of work features pop culture iconography both familiar and banal. Fragmented surrealist clichés of melting clocks and burning candles commingle with cartoonish, disembodied hands and faces. These playful elements drift aimlessly across a vivid, shifting colour field, often serially repeating across the composition like a fading echo. Their dynamic background is the bleeding through of paint applied to the reverse side of the canvas, a distinct approach central to the artist’s practice in which the canvas consequently functions as a veil—a thin partition between the conscious and subconscious, the mundane and the uncanny, the immediate and the profound.

ART PARIS Contemporary Art fair
30 March – 02 April
Grand Palais Ephemere
Paris

Gallery shows around Paris art quarters
The Marais/ 3rd arrondissement
Matignon / 8th arrondissement