The Best Paris Exhibitions to See This Week
If you’re in town for Paris+ par Art Basel and other happenings this week, be sure to pay a visit to some of these best Paris exhibitions on view at Gagosian, Place Vendôme, Hauser & Wirth, Perrotin, Marian Goodman, and Thaddaeus Ropac.
Anna Weyant, “The Return of The Girls Next Door,” 2022–23, oil on canvas, 48 × 36 inches; photo by Rob McKeever, © Anna Weyant, courtesy of Gagosian.
Gagosian Presents Public Installations and Gallery Exhibitions for Paris Art Week
Anna Weyant: “The Guitar Man”
October 18—December 22
Gagosian’s 9 rue de Castiglione gallery introduces artist Anna Weyant to the European art scene in her first solo exhibition on the continent with “The Guitar Man.” Titled after a song by the Los Angeles band Bread, Weyant’s show of new works imbues a haunting, dark mood while exploring American pop culture figures from The Addams Family and Clue to Playboy, Looney Tunes, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The latter provided much inspiration for the artist, whose House Exterior offers a depiction of the Bates family home from the story. Weyant’s heavily shadowed oil paintings showcase a mastery of depth, texture, and color in the context of storytelling, with works like The Return of The Girls Next Door and This Is a Life? posing no obvious threats, but nonetheless leaving the viewer with the shivering feeling that there might be more to the story than meets the eye.
Urs Fischer, “Wave,” 2018, milled aluminum and steel, 17 feet 3/4 inch × 24 feet 11 1/4 inches × 14 feet 9 1/8 inches; © Urs Fischer, courtesy of Gagosian.
Urs Fischer: Waves
October 14—November 30
Installed especially for the occasion of Paris+ par Art Basel, Gagosian presents Urs Fischer’s monumental 2018 sculpture Wave at the center of Place Vendôme. Part of Fischer’s Big Clays series, which begins with a piece of clay sculpted by the artist’s own hands, the form has been imagined in monumental scale—17 feet wide and 14 feet tall—and towers over passersby like a cresting wave, elevated by a plinth at the center of the square. The milled aluminum and steel sculpture is the product of sometimes hundreds of revisions made to the starting piece of clay, which is then scanned digitally and enlarged, down to the very last detail, even including the imprints of the artist’s fingerprints.
Chen Ke, “Bauhaus Gal No.23,” 2023, Oil on canvas, 47 1/4 × 39 3/8 inches; photo by Hao YANG 杨灏, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
Best Paris Exhibitions at Perrotin
Chen Ke: “Bauhaus Gal – Theatre”
October 14, 2023—January 13, 2024
At Perrotin’s rue de Turenne space, the artist Chen Ke is showing a suite of new paintings examining Bauhaus students and works of architecture that are based on photographs from the 2019 publication Bauhaus Mädelsfrom Patrick Rössler and Taschen. Rendering these appropriated images from the earlier half of the 20th century—portraits, interior scenarios, and architectural renderings—Ke created colorful canvases that center the female members of this school of architecture, drawing parallels between their experience as women working in creative fields might have been like at the time and the artist’s own time as a female art student in Beijing in the early 2000s. The practice builds on a concept the artist executed in her 2020 exhibition “The Anonymous Woman Artist,” employing a similar means of image appropriation in the telling of the story of Helen Torr, whose work remained little-known next to that of her husband, Arthur Dove, who was considerably more well-regarded.
Lisa Brice, “Untitled,” 2023, Oil on tracing paper, Image 41.9 x 29.6 cm; photo by Mark Blower, © Lisa Brice, courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London · Paris · Salzburg · Seoul.
A Must-See Show at Thaddaeus Ropac
Lisa Brice: “LIVES and WORKS”
October 16—December 23
On view at Thaddaeus Ropac’s Paris Marais space is a new body of work by Lisa Brice comprised of female figures rendered entirely in the color blue. “I like to think that my paintings are the antithesis of misrepresentation – the reclamation of the canvas by all the models, painters, wives, mistresses and performers,” said the artist of the works. This concept of agency and representation carries from the title, which applies to both action and existence, to the artist’s pensive, cerulean subjects, who are caught mid-movement, sometimes with paintbrushes in hand, leaving the viewer wondering what they might do next. The Paris show is Brice’s debut with the gallery and her first solo exhibition in France.
Henry Taylor, installation view, “From Sugar to Shit” at Hauser & Wirth, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Henry Taylor Inaugurates New Hauser & Wirth Paris Gallery
Henry Taylor: “From Sugar to Shit”
October 14, 2023—January 7, 2024
The first show to inaugurate Hauser & Wirth’s Paris gallery, Henry Taylor’s “From Sugar to Shit” encompasses more than 30 new and recent works (paintings, sculptures, and works on paper) that represent 40 years of practice and artistic development. Working from a place that is at once personal and influenced by pop culture and historical references, the artist’s creative narrative all points back to roots in human connection and the human condition. On view are sculptural works made from items pointing to the artist’s everyday life (like a tree made of detergent bottles, or the afro-foliage making up the 15-feet-tall One tree per family) and imagery rendered in the artist’s quick and adept signature, like I got brothers ALL OVA the world but they forget we’re related, in which Taylor’s friends and brothers are depicted with a graphic of the word “VICTORY.”
Delcy Morelos, “Moradas,” 2019, Variable dimensions, Galería Santa Fé, Bogota, Colombia; photo by Ernesto Monsalve P., courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery.
Best Paris Exhibitions at Marian Goodman Gallery
Delcy Morelos: “El oscuro de abajo”
October 14—December 21
Delcy Morelos’s “El oscuro de abajo” at Marian Goodman Gallery is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery and in France. It follows a longstanding practice of working with earth as a medium and creating works that speak to the body and its emotions by activating all of the senses. The exhibition centers the titular work (directly translating as “The dark one below”), which is a sweeping installation conceived for a subterranean space, where a rich landscape of monochrome earthen matter doused with the scents of cloves and cinnamon invokes a feeling of calm and a meditative state. In the upper galleries are works in textile, natural fiber, and paper made over the last 20 years, shown alongside an earthen installation that points to the artist’s focus on the interconnectedness of all living things and exploration of ancestral Andean beliefs and traditions.
