Art Basel’s French art fair, officially known as Paris +, has finally arrived, with its VIP day beginning on Wednesday morning. The fair is brimming with energy at the temporary convention center, the Grand Palais Éphémère, just across the Champ de Mars from the Eiffel Tower.
The fair honors Paris, by adding a fourth clock to its usual display that shows the time zones of its other locations (Hong Kong, Miami Beach, and Basel, Switzerland).
Here are some of the must-visit booths, at Paris + 2022,
Daniel Buren and Adel Abdessemed at Continua
Daniel Buren stages Continua as an updated iteration of the Exposition d’une exposition, une pièce en 7 tableaux, from 1972. Alternating between white and parme (an almost pinkish beige), the effect still dazzles 50 years later. While Adel Abdessemed’s sculpture commands respect, A vase sits atop a base made of various electric wires and computer parts, as well as explosive elements that could go into a bomb. It showcases the paradox of the world we live in, how two manmade things can be used to different ends: one to create culture, and the other to destroy it.
Robert Ryman at David Zwirner
Though Ryman is best known for his paintings that coalesce into striking white planes of abstraction these modest canvases teem with even more visible color. This showstopper, Untitled Study (1963), champions the artist’s thick white brushstrokes dance across a square canvas with an underpainting of deep blue that is untouched in the lower quarter.
Alvaro Barrington at Sadie Coles HQ
The young artist Alvaro Barrington is at his finest with these two knockout pieces from London’s Sadie Coles HQ. Barrington has been collaborating with Notting Hill Carnival since 2019, and these two works are real works of art, as they were painted live earlier this year during a set by Soca musician Mr. Killa. The works hum with the beats they were painted too, showing two figures set against backgrounds organized by expressionistic, painterly brushstrokes.
Kehinde Wiley at Templon
Kehinde Wiley, in Paris +, has on view a large oval-shaped painting that’ll stop you in your tracks. The painting shows a Black man with his eyes closed, seemingly reflecting as he reclines on a white-sheeted bed amid throngs of flowers.
Caroline Achaintre at Art: Concept
London-based artist Caroline Achaintre’s tapestry is a sight to behold. She had long been working with the ancient technique of tufting, a complete physical form of craft that challenges assumptions of the delicate nature of so-called women’s work.
In her art, she creates large-scale, wall-hung works that flow out in various colored threads—yellows, golds, browns, blues, whites, oranges, and more. In the new work on view here, Croaker (2022), two snake-like forms meet to create a mask-like shape.
Maxwell Alexandre at A Gentil Carioca
The paper that Alexandre uses to make his art is intentionally chosen; called pardo. It refers to a skin tone within Brazil’s racially stratified society. Around half the works depict various Black Brazilians whom Alexandre has encountered while growing up in the Rocinha favela of Rio de Janeiro.
Peter Uka at Mariane Ibrahim
Uka’s works often search for a certain nostalgia that point back toward the artist’s childhood in Nigeria, everyday moments of the kind that often aren’t recorded. In Uka’s hands, these scenes are blown-up to the proportions of history painting, as with Skate (2022), which shows a close-up of an old-school TV, in which five Black people are joyously roller skating in a park. Their clothing is richly hued in ultra-saturated greens, blues, reds, and more which gives it the dynamism that is evident when one compares the present to the past.
Marlon de Azambúja at Instituto de Visión
In the Galeries Émergentes section is a magnificent sculpture by Marlon de Azambúja that dominates this intimate booth. A collection of string lightbulbs hangs from the ceiling against yellow-painted walls and a yellow carpet. The booth, asks a fundamental question, a philosophical one to say the least; What then makes a lightbulb—its shape or its function?
Pierre Alechinsky and Jean Dubuffet at Galerie Lelong & Co.
The centerpiece of Lelong’s booth is a major sculpture by Jean Dubuffet, L’Aléatoire (conceived in 1967/1968 and executed in 2022). It stands nearly 10 feet tall, the work is done in Dubuffet’s signature style of abstracted figures with various shapes floating about in reds, blues, and whites. Just to the right of the Dubuffet is Pierre Alechinsky’s Pas autrement (1964), which was one of the last works he did in oil before switching to acrylic. The artist composed this expressionistic throng of devilish-looking heads over a decade after CoBrA, the influential avant-garde movement in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, was disbanded in 1951.