As the eventful Frieze week in London is starting to become a distant memory, we hopped onto the Eurostar and headed across the English channel to Paris for the last couple of days of the 41st Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain(FIAC) fair and the new Officielle fair.
In our experience, Paris is one of those city where you do not go cheap on the cost of hotels, as you could spend a fair whack of cash and still end up in an unpleasant establishment. We tossed between Hotel Bedford and Waldorf Madeliene which are both suitably located for easy access to the main FIAC location in Grand Palais, the shops on Champs Elysees and walkable distance to the renown departmental store Printemps.
We settled for The Waldorf Madeliene, just because we were familiar with the hotel chain and the contemporary decor was to our liking. The reception area was adorned with Paintngs signed Vienq.
A couple of stops from St Augustin metro on the M9 to Franklin D Roosevelt, we arrived at the FIAC fair.
The fair was directed by Jennifer Flay, who has been the director over the last four years. The main event of the fair was held at Grand Palais with 191 galleries from 26 countries exhibiting, which was dominated by galleries located in France, US and a good representation from Berlin.
This year saw the opening of a new satellite fair, Officielle contemporary art fair at Les Docks Cite De la mode et du design. This fair was aimed at young galleries and emerging art.This included contemporary African art, which we covered in a separate post. The event hosted 68 galleries from 14 different countries. We will cover our insight into Officielle in another post.
Our favourites from FIAC was a mixed bag of work from abstract paintings, photography, sculptures and installations. Here are a few of our favourite picks.
Number one on our list is the works of Georges Mathieu. It was the first time we encountered his work and we were intrigued. We were completely drawn in by the vibrancy of the colours and an the oriental feel to his work. We love the abstraction, intensity and battle ground of his paintings. We were informed by the gallery representative that he engaged in a form of action painting.
Georges Mathieu (1921- 2012) was a self taught painter who started of working in media and advertising. The Tate mentioned that he proclaimed to be the forerunner of drip painting and tubism. Mathieu championed Lyrical Abstraction, which was in contrast to the Geometric Abstraction movement. The work of George Mathieu was presented at FIAC Applicat-Prazan Gallery based in France.
In continuum with our love for abstract art we were attracted to abstract paintings by Franz Ackermann, who was presented by Galeria Frotes Vilaca gallery based in São Paulo Brazil. Franz Ackermann is a German artist, who lives and works Berlin and Karlsruhe, Germany.
Next on our favourites is photography by female Japanese Photographer and Director Mika Ninagawa. One of Japans most celebrated photographers. We were drawn to her vibrant aesthetics and imagery shown in her work. She was represented by Tomio Koyama Gallery who have galleries in Tokyo and Singapore. You can get an interesting monograph of her work published in 2010 from Amazon.
The Man in Japan work of Jean-Michel Basquiat was also on display. Last year, according to Bloomberg, Basquiat has become a FIAC staple, helped by soaring auction prices. A record 163 million euros was paid for works by the New York former graffiti-artist at public sales in the first half of 2013 . On the 25th anniversary of his death last year, The Guardian described Jean-Michel Basquiat as an Afro-Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn who was the greatest artist of his generation and one of the first to bring graffiti to the mainstream.
In the section where newer galleries were hosted at Grand Palais, we discovered work by Amir H Fallah , an Iranian born artist. His work was exhibited by The Third Line, a Dubai based gallery who represent Middle Eastern artists locally and internationally. We like the use of humour imagery in the work exhibited.
As we were trying to take photographs at FIAC, we became interested in observing people’s body language while taking in and visually analysing the works on display.
At the end of our day at FIAC, this artists provides a depiction of what our feet felt like after being on our feet for hours, with push pins stuck facing upwards in these sandals:)
Other events happening at the weekend was the reopening of the Picasso Museum on Oct. 25, which was free on Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, we could not make it on this trip due to the large turn out. We’ve got it pencilled in for our next visit to Paris.
That’s it for now.
