If “art is an intrinsically physical experience”, as Guillaume Piens, Art Paris director, claimed in our last interview few months ago, then we are ready to experience it again.
Related articles: MeetMe#34 | Art Paris 2020 - A glance to the Art Fairs Future
Resilience was a very used term in the art world last year, and again this year we have pronounced and listened to it a lot, specifically in these last months, regarding different fields. The art system has never stopped working, creating, planning, especially with regards to artists point of view and artistic productions. Artists’ “inner strength” and urgency to explore the world through their eyes, developing new topics, was what pushed few art events to move on, to go on.
Art Paris represents one of the first and best way to approach this “resilience” attitude. Indeed, at first the fair was postponed. It was a realistic, practical and reasonable decision taken during last May. However, despite this initial decision, Art Paris looked forward and developed a new digital adventure. Now everything is settled, and the “Parisienne” fair is going to open with brand new dates. From September 10th to 13th, the elegant Grand Palais will again be the frame of this adventure: an appointment that balances modern and contemporary art, and that has new themes on its schedule.
So, in September, after almost six months of closures, a big art event will be open again to the public. It will be exciting and special, as enjoying a creative experience should always be. For the city of Paris this is going to be a great deal, since a venue such the Grand Palais will be open to the audience to visit, see and to explore the works of art that will be shown by 112 galleries from all over the world. French galleries will be the majority, in dialogue with colleagues from all over Europe and from other countries such as Korea, Canada, the Ivory Coast and Peru. For its 22nd edition the art fair developed a vivid program showing people how the focus on contemporary art galleries remains important, displaying a generation of young French galleries and an International “Promises” section. Let’s keep an eye on this last one, that counts a selection of galleries from Abidjan, Brussels, Lima, Lisbon, Sofia, Marseille and Paris.
Alongside monographic exhibitions, that will be presented by some of the exhibiting galleries, an interesting curatorial path will be developed, following two main themes: one will be curated by Gaël Charbau, who have selected 19 artists from the French art scene, and the other will focus on the modern history of the Iberian Peninsula, from the 50s up to today. As the fair director Guillaume Piens claimed for a Kooness interview, “art is an intrinsically physical experience”. So, let’s experience it once again, before the next four-year closure of Grand Palais, planned to start from 2021.
From left to right: Ode Bertrand, Galerie Oniris, Florent Paumelle; Victor Brauner, Galeria Marc Domenec.