Any other business

  At the Palais de Tokyo , while Hugo Vitrani's big, graffiti-centred show Il morso delle termiti, which opened in June , continues, the rest of the summer's exhibitions have now been replaced, so along I went to catch them, before my annual season ticket ran out. Three (or let's maybe say two-and-a-half) of the new things turned out to be memorable. The 'half' was a roomful of agreeable paintings by an artist called Rakajoo, again assembled here by Hugo Vitrani, under the title Ceinture (belt) nwar ('deeply dark, dirty; contraction of noir - black in French - war, and zwaar - heavy in Dutch'). Then, in the sprawling group installation Hors de la nuit des normes, hors de l’énorme ennui , which, says the Palais, 'envisages plural visions of love and friendship, of romance and desire, of bodies and sexuality,' I was very taken by the work of an artist new to me: Jimmy Beauquesne. And finally, deep in the subterranean bowels of the vast Palais, I en

Josèfa Ntjam is a young artist I first came across when helping with preparations for Alternating Currents, the inaugural exhibition at Parallel Circuit, in Tehran . Her name was in the list of artists whose work was to be included in the exhibition, and I found myself translating the text of one of her videos (as it happens, now showing at FRAC Ile de France's 40th birthday exhibition, Gunaikeion , in Romainville), so it could be subtitled for Iran, and taking a train to her current home town to pick up some works (cushions) for dispatch there. Since then, I've looked out for her name and seen a few works at Poggi in Paris, and more at Toucher Terre, an exhibition of ceramic sculptures at the Espace Monte Cristo that I wrote about in July. She now has a compact but striking installation at the Fondation Pernod Ricard, called Matter Gone Wild , and I went to see it one sodden day this month. There are two things I'd like to mention as relevant here. First, something I ofte

This post is the first of three catching up with a few of the exhibitions I've been to see in November this year. The only thing they have in common is the month, so it's another of my 'bits-and-bobs' series. When you're  really  desperate for something to see, on a damp and gloomy November day, you can trek out, by metro and tram, to MacVal, the Val de Marne's very own contemporary art museum . I can be a bit snarky about MacVal, claiming it's the sort of French institution that only shows French institutional art, which I find too frigidly intellectual. I joke that the works they show are only ever black, white and grey (and preferably minimalist, if not just plain text), never in colour. My caricature holds that in contemporary art in France there are two parallel worlds: one inhabited by artists who make their living by selling through galleries and art fairs, the other by artists who don't sell at all, but show exclusively in institutional spaces, a

  This photo: The Breeder At the beginning of November I found myself back in Athens for the opening of Mamali Shafahi's latest solo show, Phantasmagoria: daddy kills more people , at The Breeder. I hadn't expected to be present, but at the last minute Mamali himself sent me a plane ticket, so off I went for three days. I don't need to write much about the exhibition, which is set in Mamali's 'signature' lighting scheme, alternating between normal gallery lights and UV LEDs, which bring to life fluorescent grids on the walls and floors, and fluorescent highlights on the works. There's a full text on The Breeder's website , along with better photos than mine, which follow. The next morning, I had time to take in a small Bob Wilson exhibition, Owls and Chairs , at the Bernier/Eliades Gallery, perhaps timed to coincide with his production of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women at the Municipal Theatre in Piraeus. After which, I took the train down to the p