Any other business

  I don't actually feel like I'm getting much done, but December has got off to a lively start, with quite a few exhibitions (not all mentioned here), as well as a quick trip to Toulouse. First of all, there was a resident artists' open day at the Fondation Fiminco, a place I've written about before on this blog . Three of the artists there this year caught my eye (in addition to Pooya Abbasian, someone I've known for a while now). Two of them, interestingly, are graduates of fashion, not art, schools, and working in textiles, which seem to be booming in contemporary art these days. Célia Boulesteix' work is greyer and grittier than that of Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust, which is more colourful and, in part, performance oriented. As usual, I was drawn to his smaller-scale works inspired, so at least I thought, by Iranian traditions. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance actually to meet Nicolas Faubert, who if I understand correctly comes from a hip-hop backgr...

  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...