The art world was shaken when the longstanding Parisian art fair FIAC was booted from its space at the Grand Palais Éphémère to make space for Art Basel’s new fair, Paris+. Meanwhile, Paris Internationale (sometimes stylized as Aaaahhh! Paris Internationale), a fair for emerging artists, still thrives.
In its eighth year, Internationale opened its first edition at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, the former studio of the 20th-century photographer Nadar. It was also the site of the crucially important Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, the first of its kind. The building now is sparse and industrial inside, but in a collaboration with the architects Christ & Gantenbein, the exhibition space was designed to generate an organic flow throughout the four floors of the fair, which hosted 59 galleries, 16 more than in the past years.
Anastasia Krizanovska, gallery manager at the Paris-based gallery Crèvecoueur, said that though the space was as large as the previous International space near the Bois de Boulogne, a sprawling park on the edge of Paris, the fair didn’t feel cramped at all. “We have more galleries this year than before, but it really feels like everybody has the space to exhibit beautifully,” Krizanovska told ARTnews.
Krizanovska also said that there was better communication between Internationale and Paris+ than there had been in years past with FIAC, which is not completely surprising given that the director of Paris+, Clément Delépine, once co-directed Internationale with its longtime director Silvia Ammon.
During the press preview, it was clear that Internationale was doing better than ever. Below is a selection of ARTnews’ top five booths.
1 Cole Lu at Chapter NY
Cole Lu’s practice is unimposing. His metal engravings and pyrographic works, which he creates using a wood-burning pen, invite audiences to approach his pieces closely and carefully pick out the sensitive illustrations that he has marked on those surfaces. What viewers will find are enigmatic, fantastical scenes from another world, and indeed a large part of Lu’s practice is world-building and narrative so that when figures appear in his work, they are not just subjects but characters. One such character is Geryon, who is centred in the piece Rope against wood is a sound; it places you in the labyrinth back on the island. The year he straps his wings, the winter holds the night to its world. (Geryon), 2022. In the work, a winged creature struggles with a man who attempts to bind Geryon’s wings.
As Alison Dillulio explained in an interview with ARTnews at the fair, Geryon is a placeholder for Lu.
“This is Geryon struggling with his father who attempts to bind his wings so Geryon will assimilate to becoming human,” Dillulio said. Lu, a trans artist, is interested in mythical creatures, often caught in the act of transformation, or the struggle to be themselves. This is a theme that appears frequently in the parallel fantasy world he has built and expresses through his work, which is at once so subtle and so vivid.
2 Monsieur Zohore at von ammon co
Von ammon and co, the Washington, D.C.-based gallery, is presenting a work that might upset some Parisians: Divine Comedy, by the Ivorian artist Monsieur Zohore, which depicts the Notre Dame in flames. Composed of paper towels printed with found images, Zohore put together a tableau that asks earnestly, ‘what do we spend our money on and why?’ In a brief interview at the fair, Zohore described feeling shocked when he saw the sheer amount of money that was raised to repair the Notre Dame in the days, months, and years after portions of the church were destroyed in the 2019 fire.
When the world is “on fire” in so many ways, whether because of natural or man-made disasters, that Notre Dame attracted so much international grief and support is a stunning spectacle, according to Zohare. He made this point with typical cheek by mashing images of the Pope admiring a Lamborghini that was donated in his honour and a Benin bronze that was in France’s possession.
3 Mara Wohnhass at BQ
Mara Wohnhass filled the Berlin-based gallery BQ’s booth with an outpouring of work. The 25-year-old piece centres on an issue close to her generation’s heart: the agonies, expectations, and failures inherent in modern communication. At the booth, canes fitted with microphones at once represent a sceptre and a lance; another work affixed to the wall was made with wigs styled into spikes that resembled the iconic Medieval weapon, the morning star. In a surreal self-portrait, different images of the artist and found objects are used to create a chimaera-like figure.
Presented as an installation, the booth becomes a sort of torture scene, all pulled together by the central piece. Another Effort to Blow It, 2022, includes four leaf blowers pointed to a chair, with two of the leaf blowers positioned on stands and sporting billowing fabric so that the impression is one of the professional lighting fixtures found in photoshoots. A long scroll of text is looped around one armrest; at the other lies a shredder. When Wohnhass animates the piece with a performance, she turns on each leaf blower, attaches the scroll of texts to the shredder, and attempts to read it over the din. Meanwhile, the text is destroyed before her eyes.
4 Ernst Yohji Jaeger at Crèvecoeur
Ernst Yohji Jaeger’s gently coloured paintings, most of which are no larger than 12 by 12 inches, are incredibly attractive paintings that suggest a world of fantasy. Their illustrative and narrative quality comes, in part, from Yohji Jaeger’s interest in manga. It’s maybe unsurprising that such works would be alluring to a French gallery, seeing as France represents 40% of the European market for comics and graphic novels, and is also an avid producer and importer of manga. In a work such as Night’s envoy, 2022, a young male figure is seen from below while a large sunset sky in which impossibly large bats fly fills the canvas. This perspective, the soaring sky, is a commonly used motif in Japanese illustrations, yet Yohji Jaeger makes it entirely his own. Like some of his other works on view, the painting centres on a sweetly melancholic figure placed amid a cosmic, epic scope.
5 Justine Kurland at Higher Pictures Generation
Valerie Solanas wrote SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto in 1967. A year later she shot Andy Warhol. Solanas’s text has recently been of renewed interest, especially following Andrea Long Chu’s manifesto Females, which explores Solanas’ ideology. Photographer Justine Kurland, presented by the Brooklyn-based gallery Higher Pictures Generation, is the latest to take on Solanas’ call. In her series “Society for Cutting Up Men’s Books (SCUMB)”, she created collages by cutting out images from her favourite art books that featured male photographers who have monopolized the field of photography.
The collages recall a moment of feminist rage that seems due for resurrection. The results are abstracted, fractal, and dense, a far cry from Kurland’s photographic work, in which her subjects, typically wild young women and girls, were surrounded by a calm natural landscape.
Source: ARTnews
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