Art-fair fatigue 4: Paris Internationale and Asia Now

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Paris Internationale and Asia Now were two of the main 'side-shows' during FIAC week.

Crèvecoeur at Paris Internationale

In my post about the FIAC, I suggested Paris Internationale was roughly 'the FIAC's Liste', and in the one about Basel, that at Liste, 'less fancy galleries can show edgier (and cheaper) work in grungier surroundings.' Paris Internationale was at its grungiest when, a few years ago, it took place in a disused garage and all the works ended up covered in dust. This year, the location was anything but grungy: an empty mansion of vast, labyrinthine apartments ('block of flats' would be too lowly a term) on the avenue Victor Hugo, in in the 16th arrondissement.

Two exhibits in particular stood out, to me: Crèvecoeur's spacious installation, including painted walls, of works by Ad Minoliti and Naoki Sutter-Shudo, whose little sculptures had already tempted me at the Ménilmontant gallery; and Delgosha, from Tehran, who'd gone out on a limb to show what in Europe might be called 'outsider' art, works by Hayedeh Ayazi, a self-taught artist in her 60s whose paintings (as I also said about Kévin Bray's) get better and better - and bigger, too.

I was also quite interested in pictures by Kinke Kool shown by Lucas Hirsch, in one of the first rooms I visited.

Asia Now is an event I'd never heard of, let alone been to before, but this year it included a 'Tehran Now' platform that attracted a number of Tehran galleries, so along I went. The name of the show is misleading, as what you see isn't really a panorama of the best art in Asia today, but in some cases what you might call second- or even third-tier work.

It was nice, however, to see things by familiar Iranian artists, such as a new flocked relief by Mamali Shafahi, at Plus Two, also, in a 'busy' presentation, showing Nima Zare Nahandi and Amir Kamand, and some nice pieces from Fereydoun Ave's personal collection, not for sale; and two floors up, seductive works by Mimi Amini at Etemad - big paintings on the backs of canvases and their stretchers, but also smaller pieces on paper, perhaps better still. There were also more paintings (after those on Dastan's booth at the FIAC) by Hoda Kashiha at Nathalie Obadia. The same gallery had some work by Shahpour Pouyan that would go well with my little 'sub-collection', around the theme of Indo-Persian painting, at home.















This is a link to a review, in French, of Paris Internationale.

And this is a link to an Artsy article about Asia Now.

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