Art Paris at the Grand Palais Ephémère: confirmed success in 2022
Same results for Art Paris 2022 as for last year’s edition, which nevertheless took place in September: public and commercial success thanks to the sharp curating of the organizers. The major French galleries (Templon, Obadia, Mennour, etc.) and a few European brands are present at the call. Many sales at average prices. The formula pleases.
Comfortably installed in the Grand Palais Éphémère from April 7 to 10, Art Paris 2022 will seem to exceed the number of visitors to last September’s edition (72,746 visitors). Every day, the aisles of the fair of modern and contemporary art (more spacious than in 2021) were filled with visitors, happy to find varied proposals, accessible and sometimes at very low prices (the publisher Bernard Chauveau thus offers a very beautiful box of sixteen engravings Chevalme sisters for 950 euros!).
History in spades
The number of historical works is impressive since, even on the stands of the most contemporary galleries, you can admire paintings and sculptures from before 1950. A way of reassuring customers! Among the most remarkable, no doubt, this gouache and charcoal by Pablo Picasso from 1914 (Traits noirs gallery), this incredible little landscape by Nicolas de Staël (Jeanne Bucher Jaeger gallery) or these Miró and Tapies (Gallery Mayoral).
The news often dictates the composition of fair stands as long as the impact of temporary exhibitions in museums is great on a public that loves reunions with great artists. Thus the paintings of the Portuguese Vieira da Silva announced the retrospective of the Cantini museum in Marseilles in June (Fleury gallery) or those of Simon Hantaï (Jean Fournier gallery), which foreshadow the surprises of the exhibition of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in may .
Continuing their presentation of the work of Gilles Aillaud (1928-2005), who has still not produced a Parisian retrospective, Hervé Loevenbruck and Alexandra Schillinger offer drawings (the four are already sold) and paintings by this representative of the New Figuration. Cold colors, impression of overexposure to light, play of perspectives, strange subjects oscillating between animals in freedom and in cages. The animal paintings and landscapes of Gilles Aillaud respond with accuracy, on the stand, works by Jean Dupuy, Dewar and Gicquel and Blaise Drummond.
Many one-man shows
Several galleries have entered the perilous exercise of the one man show. The Sabine Vazieux gallery, for example, is taking up the large expressionist canvases by the Chinese artist Rao Fu that it showed this winter. Catherine Issert devotes its entire stand to recent paintings by Jean-Charles Blais, while Le Feuvre & Roze dresses its space with palms and plants by Julien Colombier.
favorites
It is impossible, again this year, to list all the favorites as long as the galleries have made efforts to surprise visitors. However, it is necessary to note a new duo on the stand of the Claude Bernard gallery: the textile sculptures of Sheila Hicks (born in 1934) respond to the discreet watercolors of the Swiss Julius Bissier (1893-1965). This meeting turned out to be full of meaning because, when the dealer announced his intention to the American designer, the latter explained to him that the first work she had bought in her life was a watercolor by Bissier. Incredible !
Among the youngest artists who have been favorites of the public, we must mention the wall of self-portraits by Edi Dubien (Alain Gutharc gallery). This artist (born in 1963) exhibits here the faces and bodies of adolescents accompanied by animals. He raises the question of the construction of his own identity (born a girl, he became a boy quite late) and the freedom to be himself. Sixty drawings (from 1000 to 5000 euros) were sold during the fair! Same success for the compositions of Odonchimeg Davaadorj (Backslash gallery), which will have a retrospective in the orangery of the Château de Chamarande this summer. A fair that reveals surprises and touches the general public!