Last night Elephant headed to the vibrant opening of new Parisian fair, Paris Internationale — or as it is often rather brilliantly referred, AAAAHHH!!! Paris Internationale. The fair is gallery initiated and comprises 34 galleries and 7 non-profit spaces from 13 countries. A creative sidekick to this week’s FIAC, that offers a stellar line up.
Situated at 45 Avenue d’lena, this is a fair with a very welcome non-fair feel to it. Visitors enter via a courtyard that sits in the midst of a perfectly crumbling, sprawling building; all checkerboard-tiled winding staircases, cracked plastered walls, rich-red papered rooms and vast Parisian windows. Last night felt like the meeting of an art opening and a house party; some rooms pulsing with pink lights and disco music (courtesy of Spike Berlin, who are curating a talk series throughout the week), others packed with work from top of their game up-and-comers. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
The curation feels fresh, many galleries responding to the space and exhibiting work in a dynamic manner that keeps threads running from booth to booth. A young-ish aesthetic presides over much of the work — top marks for the brilliant Celia Hempton at Paris’ Sultana gallery and Florian Germann at Zurich’s Galerie Gregor Staiger. Over at Mexico City’s Proyectos Monclova, Martin Soto Climent offers a clean approach to eroticism, his smoothly sheened peach works proving unavoidably appealing to the crowds.
Perhaps it’s the lack of stark white box surroundings, but everything seems to have a welcomingly tactile quality to it — a few more drinks and you might have found us splashing around in Germann’s bright pink waters. We also enjoyed Judith Hopf’s raven sculptures at Munich’s Deborah Schamoni gallery and Kate Newby’s miniature natural collectibles at Laurel Gitlen.
Each of the booths here feel considered and there is an energy that you might expect to find in an artist run space. This isn’t smooth around the edges, and much for the better.
Paris Internationale runs until 24 October at 45 Avenue d’lena, Paris
