The second edition of Paris Internationale Art Fair breathes new air within Parisian Art Scene, usually controlled by well established galleries, steady institutions and conservative collectors. Fresh and dynamic, the art fair brought to the french capital a wide eclectic range of up-and-coming galleries from all over the world, many of them relatively unknown, which made it a great place for new discoveries.
Of 53 galleries and 7 project spaces hailing from 19 countries, only 11 were local. Young but not naive, Paris Internationale featured a carefully curated selection of art displayed in the roughly beautiful setting of an 19th century Hotel Particulier that used to be home of Calouste Gulbenkian, situated just by the Arc De Triomphe.
From basement to top, the building was filled with works of emerging artist as well as important ones, which have represented their countries at The Biennales and have shown at major museums, but are not stellar yet. Moving around the fair, Dubai’s Green Art Gallery made brilliant use of the display cabinets in their space, to show the works of Nazgol Ansarinia, a female artist from Tehran, who also was featured in Venice Biennale. Her practice involves breaking down domestic items and putting them back together again to explore the inner workings of a social system.
By placing the works in this context they gain another layer of complexity. Other highlights included Basim Magdy and Jiri Thyn works at Prague based Hunt Kastler Gallery, the paintings of Kaoru Arima at Tokyo’s Misako Rosen, the Polish Gallery Dawid Radziszewski and the work of Sean Towny at Antoine Levi.
Article and photo by CECILIA MUSMECI
