Art-fair fatigue 4: Paris Internationale and Asia Now

Posted

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Palais de Tokyo's summer exhibitions, 2023

Posted
Image
The Palais de Tokyo has no air-conditioning, and some of its galleries have glass roofs, so in the summer the place can get very hot. I well remember, during Prince.sse.s des Villes , the sprawling summer exhibition of 2019, it was stifling. It has, however, an abundance of labyrinthine, relatively rarely-used underground spaces in bare concrete. The drop from the avenue in front of the Palais to the streets at the back, at river level, is considerable. (The long flights of stairs are familiar to me from visits to the Iranian embassy's visa department.) I've no idea how many buried levels the building actually has. Anyway, this year, the curators have had the clever idea of going down nearly as deep as possible, creating a new pathway starting at least two floors below street level, where it's dark and cool. Exhibition halls on the main and upper floors aren't used at all; only the ticket offices, shop and restaurant are still open. Guards and visitors can all be gratef
Read more

Anna Uddenberg: an interesting new development

Posted
Image
Anna Uddenberg is a Swedish artist whose work has, I think, something quite original, distinctive and perceptive to say about the image of women in certain, specific currents of consumer culture that might otherwise be overlooked. I hadn't seen much of her recently, but she now has an exhibition, at her Berlin Gallery, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (or K-T Z), of totally new works focusing, this time, not on women but on men. The resulting woodcarvings are an interesting and quite surprising development, and add to what seems to be almost a 'fashion' for reliefs in art at the moment. This is the link to the new exhibition, 'Big Baby' , at K-T Z. This is the link to a video about the new work, on Vimeo , but the video is also on the gallery website. This is the direct link to the page about Anna Uddenberg on the gallery site. The following are some photos of Anna Uddenberg's new and previous work, 'borrowed' from K-T Z.
Read more

nerd_funk and the emergence of a new genre

Posted
Image
nerd_funk is the name of an ambitious, multi-faceted project by Ali Eslami and Mamali Shafahi. Ali and Mamali are both Iranian by birth but now based mainly in Europe. Ali is from a new-technology background but has gravitated towards art, and will soon take up a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Mamali is from a fine-arts background, but has developed a strong interest in new technologies, now often at the heart of his practice. Their profiles fit together neatly, like the pieces of a puzzle; this helps explain the unique strengths of their partnership in a project that combines art and high-tech. Shared interests Mamali and Ali discovered they shared a fascination with the impact on our lives, now and in the future, for good or ill, of new and emerging technologies, along with the now-ubiquitous phenomena, such as social media, they have made possible, and it was this shared interest that cemented their partnership. They're interested in how, already, technol
Read more