ART PARIS ART FAIR 2019 at Grand Palais / Paris 4th – 7th April 2019
As usual this year the 21st edition of the Art Paris Art Fair will be held at the Grand Palais in Paris from the 4th til the 7th of April 2019 and there is a lot to look for. The peculiarity of the fair is always been to pay specific attention to the emerging art scene while celebrating international art scene from the post-war years to the present day. Since last year’s edition the number of galleries participating and exhibiting in the fair has increased, they are now 150 and among them we can mention Art Concept, Ceysson & Bénétière, Jérome Poggi, Praz Delavallade e SAGE Paris. Twenty are the countries which will be represented during the event, from Asia to Africa, from the Middle East to the Americas.
It’s interesting to see that for this edition the curators chose a double focus: on one side we have a detailed analysis of women artists, on the other the art scene of Latin America. In order to conceive a journey that could highlight the efforts of women artists in France from 1945 to today, the organizers of the fair placed the task in the capable hands of AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, an association that was founded in 2014 by seven women and that wants to give voice to the work of women artists of the twentieth century.
One of the co-founders, Camille Morineau, art historian specialized in women artists, selected 25 projects among the proposals of the participant galleries following four themes: Abstraction, the Feminist Avant-Garde, Image and Theatricality. There are many notable proposals, those of Valerie Belin, Laure Prouvost, Shirley Jaffey (Nathalie Obadia), Esther Ferrer (Lara Vincy), Oda Jaune (Templon), ed Orlan (Ceysson & Bénétière), just to mention some of them. Something that connects the two main focuses of this edition of the fair is for sure the exhibition about a number of Latin American women artists from the collection of Catherine Petitgas, art patron and member of the Tate Latin American Acquisitions Committee and of the Centre Pompidou International Council.
The section focusing on Latin America is named Southern Stars and is curated by the independent exhibition curator Valentina Locatelli. The exploration takes a selection of sixty Latin American artists represented by about twenty galleries. Some of them will be exhibiting the works of of the proponents of geometric abstraction from the 60s and 70s, including Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ivan Contreras Brunet, Dario Perez Flores and Marino di Teana.
The Cuban scene instead is the subject of a group exhibition at the Xin Dong Cheng Gallery, which brings together six artists from different generations: Manuel Mendive, Raúl Martínez, Adonis Flores, René Francisco Rodriguez, Michel Mirabal and Yunier Hernández Figueroa. In addition to the Southern Star section there will be two panel discussions, which will be held on the 5th of April at the Maison de l’Amerique Latine, titled “Latin American women artists in France” and “Presence and visibility of Latin American women artists in the world of contemporary art”. In this 21st edition of the fair there will also be a record breaking 39 monographic exhibitions a trend that we already noticed during Paris Photo 2018. Something that emphasizes the vocation of the fair as an occasion to discover young talents will be the section “Promises”, located in the central part of the Grand Palais, which hosts 14 galleries created less than six years ago and that may present one to three emerging artists.
Dolores Pulella
XIBT MEDIA PARTNER OF ART PARTIS ART FAIR 2019
All images > Art Paris © Marc Domage
