The art festival 212 Photography Istanbul defiantly breaks away from Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian politics and polarised society. In its sixth year, it is an outward-looking festival keen to project its young, vibrant and international character.
The programme is ambitious, with exhibitions and events that cross from the Asian to the European sides of the city. It takes visitors on a tour of a lesser-known but vibrant and burgeoning Istanbul. Exhibition spaces include a disused gasworks, a 15th-century cannonball factory, a Roman Catholic church and an old brewery. There is a playfulness in the curation: Annelie Vandendael’s photographs of swimmers float on water.
Putting on a festival of photography in Turkey is no mean feat. The organisers had to negotiate a fine balance between knowing the limits of what could be shown and keeping their integrity while trying all that they might to push the boundaries. One public installation by the artist Özgür Ballı using augmented reality was repeatedly moved by the police because it was in a square where protesters gather.
One artist smashing boundaries and subverting stereotypes is Mous Lamrabat. He has created his own utopian world in the portrait series Mousganistan. This is a joyful place where Lamrabat plays with symbols of western capitalism and his Moroccan heritage to create thought-provoking images that are deceptively simple and full of humour. His eye for colour pops off the wall and the compositions always surprise.
He says his favourite way to work is to create images on the spot and be surprised by the outcome. At a family gathering of 30 people, he decided to photograph each relative using just the props around him. His nephew wanted to do something with a plant and Mous wanted to make him a superhero. That spontaneous energy exudes from his images, but they are at the same time effortlessly cool.
Daniëlle van Zadelhoff uses the language of baroque painting to present enigmatic portraits of people whose gaze is often longing or tragic. There is something uncomfortable and uncanny about these subjects who are disconnected with time and place. She says she recognises that people who are suffering are often alone and she wants her photographs to communicate that desire for contact. Her models are all people who have experienced something life-changing, but theirs are not stories that Van Zadelhoff wants to share. Instead, she uses lighting and composition to draw the viewer in and make them reflect on their own experiences.
Another artist digging into human emotion is Éva Szombat, although she is exploring the realm of happiness, in all its guises. She has a photographic eye for the surreal and a taste for kitsch. Her still lives and portraits are often tongue in cheek and they always pop and fizz with colour. In her series Practitioners she finds people who devote themselves to the pursuit of happiness, be it through their pets, hobbies or relationships.
A game of quick-fire association is played out in Surrealogy, made in collaboration with Fanny Papay, depicting the 12 signs of the zodiac. After all, astrology in all its mystery and pretence is a place where people go to look for happiness.
Made in Dublin may feel out of character with the rest of the festival but there is no theme to the programme, so it comes as a welcome opportunity to experience this extraordinary, symphonic portrait of a city. The piece has been lauded by Martin Parr as the best of street photography. Being immersed in a flow of images, projected across nine screens, with sound and words is gripping, hypnotic and at times jarring, just as the experience of walking through an urban environment can be when sounds, thoughts, memories collide with the shifting world around you. It is a masterful piece of collaboration with photography by Eamonn Doyle, design by Niall Sweeney and a soundtrack by David Donohoe that includes the words and voice of Kevin Barry.
The festival includes a large show of artists using AI to create images, but it was the next-door exhibition focusing on botany that made me question what was real. Where the Wild Roses Grow imagines a time before humanity had the power to destroy its environment. Images of oversized flowers and suffocating forests compete with installations of living plants to create a space that is reminiscent of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids.
Tine Poppe’s majestic portraits of flowers have something of the memento mori about them. She photographs cut flowers in a studio against printed backdrops of landscapes in crisis. They are strange, unreal looking images that highlight the climate crisis by looking at the environmental cost of growing flowers in industrial-scale greenhouses and transporting them long distances.
Ever since the U.K. officially left the European Union in January 2020, the London economy seems to have lost its mojo. Its stock market succumbed its leading European position to Paris last year, and local tourist shopping is said to be on the verge of dwindling below that of Paris and Milan. Doubts of the prospect of the city’s art market are also on the horizon, particularly after last year’s buzzy launch of Paris+ by Art Basel. Some galleries have left London for new spaces in the French capital; meanwhile, two London fairs, Masterpiece and Art and Antiques Fair Olympia, canceled their events, citing Brexit.
But while Brexit—plus inflation and rising costs of living—has undoubtedly damaged the country’s art market, that reality masks another, more encouraging picture. The U.K.’s art market remains the world’s second largest, with an 18 percent share by value after the U.S., which dominates with 45 percent, according to this year’s Art Basel UBS Art Market Report.
“I believe London will remain Europe’s most important city for the art trade,” said Thomas Stauffer, art advisor and co-founder of the Zurich-based Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts, which has long done business with the London art market. “Keep in mind that London is somehow the only ‘megacity’ or ‘global city’ in Europe.”
London has a population of 14 million including the metropolitan area, and it is also the most ethnically diverse city in the country. Its history and world-class cultural institutions provide “‘soft power’ at its best,” according to Stauffer.
Opening night of Stephen Friedman Gallery’s new London space on October 6, 2023, featuring ‘Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun,’ a new exhibition by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare. Photo credit: Mark Blower. Courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery.
There’s also been a number of new galleries opening in London over the past two years, while others are expanding. Just during this Frieze week alone Alison Jacques opened a new 6,000-square-foot space on Cork Street, Stephen Friedman inaugurated its new space (also on Cork Street), London gallerist Pilar Corrias opened a new flagship in Mayfai, Tiwani Contemporary is opening its new space on Cork Street today, and Lehmann Maupin announced this week that the gallery will be opening a new pop-up location in London in 2024, in addition to its current space in South Kensington.
“London has been a cornerstone of the art market since the 18th century. Brexit has undoubtedly had an impact, but to established commercial galleries with global artists, there is minimal disruption,” said dealer Stephen Friedman, whose gallery has been in London for 28 yeare. “London goes from strength to strength and I don’t see that changing. It attracts great artists, gallerists, and collectors throughout the years and has done so historically.”
The Artist Room opens its new Soho space on October 9, 2023, coinciding with Frieze week in London. Courtesy The Artist Room.
“If we look at history, London is resilient, physically and metaphorically,” said Maria Varnava, who founded Tiwani Contemporary in London in 2011. “It has one of the most established art ecosystems. Collectors always return to London to engage with galleries.” One reason, she noted, is the country’s official English language, which is the global art world’s lingua franca.
A new generation of younger gallerists are also taking their chances on London in recent years. These include East London’s Sherbet Green and Guts Gallery; Angelica Jopling, daughter of White Cube founder Jay Jopling, opened her gallery Incubator in Marylebone in April. Sim Smith, which opened doors in 2019, moved to a new space last month. The Artist Room, founded in 2021, just welcomed visitors to its new two-floor premise on Soho’s Great Chapel Street with a solo show of U.K.-based artist William Brickel. Milo Astaire, founder of The Artist Room, said the new space, also home to Plaster magazine, “will allow for ambitious presentations of works by international contemporary artists in addition to carefully curated thematic exhibitions and special projects.”
Pilar Corrias attends the Pilar Corrias Gallery Dinner in Celebration of New Flagship Gallery, Frieze London 2023 and in honor of artists Christina Quarles and Sophie Von Hellerman at Two Temple Place on October 9, 2023 in London, England. Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images for Pilar Corrias Gallery.
A look at the statistics coming out of Cromwell Place, the art complex in South Kensington, may offer some interesting insights on the London art market. Opened in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Cromwell Place has quickly established itself as a home base for numerous art galleries and businesses (including Artnet’s London office).
Member galleries can either rent a space for pop-up shows or operate on a long-term basis. The complex has hosted exhibitions by around 150 member galleries and partner events, such as the London Design Festival’s Brompton Design District, London Craft Week, and London Art Week. Some 62 percent of the member galleries are based in the U.K., 6.6 percent from Europe, and more than 31 percent are based internationally.
Since its inception, Cromwell Place has hosted 62 member galleries who never had a space in London before. These include the New York-based Sundaram Tagore Gallery, which opened its first London space at the complex in May with a presentation of Hiroshi Senju works. This Frieze week, the gallery is hosting a retrospective of the 1930-born American artist Susan Weil.
Artist Susan Weil (in white shirt) attends the opening of her solo exhibition at Sundaram Tagore Gallery at Cromwell Place, London, October 10, 2023. Photo credit: Harry Pseftoudis, courtesy Sundaram Tagore Gallery
“There is a two-fold perception problem reinforced by media headlines that doesn’t reflect the true health of the art market,” said Elizabeth Dellert, Cromwell Place’s chief business development officer. “The difficulties surrounding the London art market have remained focused on the financial impact after Brexit. There is indeed an added layer of paperwork and costs involved in dealing with imports and exports. However, import taxes are… the lowest in Europe.”
Dellert added that if items are brought into the country under temporary admission licenses, import duties can be deferred for up to two years, or until the items are sold. Leaving the European Union has certainly hurt London, but the city remains competitive on a global scale, especially when taking the Americas and Asia into account.
For Asian art dealers hoping to venture into the global market, London is still one of the best places to go. For many, a lingering familiarity with London stems from Britain’s colonial rule of Hong Kong, which was culturally influential in the region throughout the 1980s and ’90s. It has also remained as a main art trading hub in the Asia-Pacific since the 1997 handover to China. As Asia’s art scene and market continue to expand, gallerists from the continent are keen to explorie opportunities beyond the region, and London, where 20 percent of its population identifies as Asian, becomes a top choice.
Asian gallerists who have recently established footholds in the U.K. capital include A.I. Gallery, which has a space in East London and also operates as a member gallery at Cromwell Place, and 3812 Gallery from Hong Kong. Beijing’s Tabula Rasa Gallery opened its London space in Hoxton in 2021.
Bluerider Art, originally from Taipei, opened its Mayfair space just last month after three years of planning. The gallery promotes primarily Western contemporary artists in its Taipei and Shanghai spaces, but in London, it aims to foster an East-West dialogue.
Bluerider Art Gallery celebrates the opening of its Mayfair space, September 2023. Courtesy of Bluerider Art Gallery.
Elsa Wang, founder of Bluerider Art, said that London’s acceptance of Chinese and Asian cultures has made it more comfortable for Asians to do business in the U.K. capital. She added that the use of the English language was also key to her decision to choose London over Paris or other European cities, and has since committed a 10-year lease for her gallery’s Mayfair space.
“Every city has its advantages and disadvantages. And because we are just a gallery, it’s sort of an affordable investment. It’s not a manufacturing factory,” Wang said. “My philosophy is, if we can afford it and plan it carefully, anytime is the right time for a long-term investment.”
Other galleries that aren’t yet committing to a permanent space are also exploring London’s art market in different ways. South Korea’s Hyundai Gallery is collaborating with Michael Werner to showcase American artist James Lee Byars and Korean artist Seung-Taek Lee, while South Korea’s Kukje Gallery is teaming up with London’s Mazzoleni to present work by Lee Seung Jio alongside Italian artist Agostino Bonalumi in London during Frieze week.
Wu Yin, Golden Time. Courtesy of Ming Gu Gallery.
London-based emerging art dealer Guming Song staged his first pop-up show under the banner of Ming Gu Gallery last month, with a mission to bring under-represented East Asian aesthetics to the Western art world. Song, who relocated from his native China and has been living in the U.K. for 14 years, opted for a pop-up model for its flexibility, with an initial plan to stage exhibitions every five months for the first two years and then scale up. “London is a well-established center for art, which has a strong ‘gravitational pull’ for a wide range of people, from the general public to serious collectors,” he said.
Meanwhile, Seoul-based gallerist Jason Haam will return to London in November for a second pop-up show titled “Karma,” featuring Jungwook Kim, Minjung Kim, Mike Lee, and Moka Lee, four Korean artists across four decades, from the 1960s to 1990s.
“London is still a top city for the arts and a center for the European art market,” Haam said. “The English-language media is also much more impactful than other languages and London is a media hub, so it’s not all just London’s art market.”
Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.
Students from the AP Drawing & Painting and AP Photography classes explored The Broad in Downtown Los Angeles last week, taking in the museum’s collection of work by modern and contemporary artists. The goal of the field trip was to explore the special exhibition “Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody,” paying attention to his career and growth as an artist.
Students examined Haring’s chronological evolution to see how he edited, practiced, and experimented with styles, medium, and ideas. This serves as meaningful inspiration for AP students, who, in creating a portfolio their senior year that investigates an idea will have to do the same sort of examination of their own body of work.
David Gomez Novy ’24, while initially caught off guard by Haring’s works, came to an appreciation, saying, “An unconventional canvas can add to a work or sometimes be the meaning in and of itself.”
For Autumn Zhou ’24, Haring’s use of scale was her biggest takeaway. “He wasn’t afraid to go big and take up space,” she said. “It inspired me to paint bigger things.”
“Sometimes the simpler things can be more effective,” said Carlo Campos Costanzo ’24 about Haring’s bold style. “It lets them be iconic.”
Flintridge Preparatory School, 4543 Crown Ave., La Cañada Flintridge, (818) 790-1178 or visit www.flintridgeprep.org.
HIGH POINT — Zoe Grace Kamiya admitted Thursday to being nervous about her art’s big debut Saturday at the fall High Point Market.
But the 12-year-old wasn’t nervous about how it will be received, being in front of a crowd of adults or how her public painting demonstrations will go, even the one in front of TV cameras. She was worried about putting the final touches on her oil paintings in time for the exhibit.
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
“We had no money, no backers, we started with nothing,” says artist Jason Hwang about how he and curator Romain Chenais opened a project space in Ménilmontant, a popular district in Paris next to the Père Lachaise cemetery, in 2011. Two years later, joined by gallerist Philippe Joppin, they founded High Art, now one of Paris’s most exciting galleries.
High Art, which is showing in the Paris+ par Art Basel fair next week, “appears to be the most dynamic of the galleries that have flourished in Paris in the past decade”, says art critic Henri-François Debailleux.
“We thought we had to move from a project space to a gallery in order to accompany the artists,” says Joppin, previously a director of Perrotin gallery in Paris. “We weren’t satisfied by one-shot shows; the artists need to know we are committed to them long term. And we like to have several exhibitions over time with them.” They branded it High Art because they did not want to use their names and they wanted to emphasise the international vision of the gallery. It is also an allusion to the long debate about art versus craft.
High Art now represents 25 artists from different parts of the world, including some they have introduced to France. Rachel Rose, Valerie Keane, Max Hooper Schneider, Laure Prouvost and David Douard were offered early solo shows. Prices range from €5,000 to €70,000, although some installations reach €100,000 or more. In 2020, High Art also set up a branch in Arles in the south of France, which is home to several art foundations.
The headquarters, though, are now established in Pigalle. The gallery moved there in 2017, setting up in the building where Georges Bizet wrote his 1875 opera Carmen. Apart from a few pockets, Pigalle is no longer the red-light district it used to be. Rather, it has revived its image as the birthplace of Romanticism, inhabited by musicians, painters and writers in the 19th century and referred to at the time as “the new Athens”. Pigalle is quite separate from the trendy Marais quarter where contemporary galleries have prospered, but the gentrified atmosphere there did not appeal to the High Art team.
Joppin wants the gallery to be a venue where collectors could be tempted to visit after a first encounter with High Art, often at a fair. Participating in global events has always been a driver for High Art. “We need these events to meet collectors who come to us to discover new forms of art,” Joppin says, adding that 80 per cent of their sales go abroad. High Art started in the emerging-gallery segments of these fairs, but has now found its place in their main sections.
At Paris+ the gallery is showing figurative works from a group show (including Keane, Julien Creuzet, Mélanie Matranga and Orion Martin), mirroring a selection of abstract works presented at Frieze in London the week before. In Pigalle from October 19, High Art will welcome the work of London-based artist Michael Ho, who paints images on the back of the canvas.
“I was happy to work with High Art because, among the younger galleries, they have the strongest international aura, and I knew they were the right spokespeople for my message in these big venues,” says Creuzet. Raised in Martinique, he will represent France at the 60th Venice Biennale next year. In 2019, his first show at the gallery featured splashy coloured installations made of recycled material and drew attention to the poisoning of French-Caribbean people due to a pesticide used in banana plantations for two decades. The Possessed of Pigalle, his second exhibition last spring, evoked a Vodou temple in the district.
British artist Matt Copson had his first exhibition in France at High Art in 2016, before a “very ambitious show” in Pigalle, “a kind of three-part opera inspired by Bizet”, during the difficult time of long lockdowns. “We have had a very close relationship from day one,” he says. “There is a constant dialogue. They are not market-driven. And it was very important to be able to deal with three people on equal basis. With one we can talk about mechanical practicality and, with another, dive into the conceptual nature of my practice. This kind of relationship is very rare.”
Chenais believes the “Parisian art scene has become much more effervescent. When we started, big collections were state-run — very much top-down. Now private collectors and foundations, starting with Arnault and Pinault, are present in the city and this has an impact on all layers of the market — and the way people look at young artists and galleries.”
After Brexit, adds Joppin, several British galleries opened offices in Paris or even moved there. He reckons, though, that post-Covid times are weighing on the business: “In Paris, the art market has always had low seasons and high ones, but the lowest ones seem to drag on a bit longer now.” What he feels the need for is “the rise of a new, strengthened generation of French collectors” to maintain the impetus in these uncertain times.
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
“Paris is a city we love, and it’s very important for artists!” exclaims Hauser & Wirth’s president Marc Payot, speaking about the company’s new gallery in the capital, which opens to the public on October 14. “We had been looking for the right space for over 10 years,” he says, “and we got very close a number of times, but now finally we have found the right building in the right neighbourhood.”
That building is a four-floor neoclassical hôtel particulier dating from 1877: its facade is listed but the inside was completely rebuilt by architect Luis Laplace, creating a breathtaking six-metre-high gallery on the ground floor. It is in the “golden triangle” bordered by the Champs-Élysées, avenue Montaigne and avenue Georges V; neighbours include couturiers and luxury goods stores such as Céline and Courrèges. It is the 16th gallery for the juggernaut, which as well as selling art has a separate business running hotels and restaurants, Artfarm.
The Paris space will be run by the trilingual Séverine Waelchli, who has a wealth of experience in the gallery world: she has previously worked with Sprüth Magers, Yvon Lambert and Thaddaeus Ropac.
I ask her about the recent chatter concerning rivalry between Paris and London. Since Brexit, the British capital has lost some standing in the art market, while Paris seems to be on the up-and-up, with smart new private museums and, of course, the Olympics next year. Is this another sign that the French capital is winning out?
“London will always be London, and the two cities are complementary,” Waelchli says. “There is no doubt that the cultural scene in Paris is expanding.” But Payot affirms: “This is definitely not a decision against London, we really believe in the city!” Indeed, Artfarm bought the storied Groucho Club in Soho last year. “We don’t favour one capital over the other,” he says. “Of course there is competition, but Paris is important for its layers of history, and a longer engagement with contemporary art.”
The space opens with a show by the Los Angeles-based artist Henry Taylor, with paintings and sculptures spread across the two exhibition floors. In a preview, I saw immense sculptures including the 4.6-metre-high “One tree per family” (2023), made of artificial afro hair, and an untitled portrait of a group of white-shirted black boys posing against the sign “Victory”. The lift and walls around the impressive staircase are decorated with bold black and gold diagonals by the artist Martin Creed.
“Henry is one of the great black figurative painters,” says Payot; his retrospective has just travelled to the Whitney in New York from LA MoCA. “But he doesn’t have the same institutional support in France, he hasn’t had the same exposure in Europe, which is one reason why we decided to open with his work in Paris.” Taylor has certainly immersed himself in Paris, having spent all this summer there, drawing inspiration from the Impressionists, Expressionists and Fauvists in its museums, notably the Musée d’Orsay.
H&W Paris will host four to five shows a year, with a mix of international and French artists — already planned are exhibitions by Camille Henrot, Pierre Huyghe, Barbara Chase-Riboud and Hélène Delprat. “And we will add new artists to the programme as we go along,” says Waelchli, noting that the gallery had just signed Delprat and will give her a show in January. “But we won’t only show French artists, and many [non-French artists] we represent are very keen to show here — artists all want to show in Paris.”
‘Henry Taylor: From Sugar to Shit’ runs October 14-January 7, hauserwirth.com
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
After a well-received first edition of Paris+ par Art Basel last year, Vincenzo de Bellis, the group’s Italian-born director of fairs and exhibition platforms, is well aware of what the music industry calls “second-album syndrome”: the danger that a follow-up falls short of the success of the first. But this year, he says, the fair (October 18-22) has a much broader citywide programme; expected visitor numbers are up; and its exhibitors and organisers have had longer to prepare, given that the event only joined the Art Basel stable in early 2022. “If anything, it will be better!” he says.
De Bellis’s role at Art Basel has also evolved in the past 12 months. He joined shortly before last year’s Paris fair and at the time was working two transatlantic jobs (his previous role at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis didn’t end until last October). And while he was appointed to oversee all four Art Basel fairs — in Basel, Miami, Hong Kong and Paris — this was before each had a dedicated director, so he was initially more hands-on.
The unflashy de Bellis seems more comfortable in a less public-facing spot now. He sees his role as having an alternative eye to the others in the room while also leaning on his curatorial experience to “open up conversations with institutions and people I have known for many years”. His vision, he says, is “to remember that artists are the core of what we do and letting them lead is always beneficial to everyone”, believing that their voices can provide “fertile ground” to bring in new ideas for the fair group. De Bellis is, however, under no illusions about his priority task. “It needs to be very, very understood that Art Basel is a commercial enterprise that stands for supporting sales of art,” he says.
At the same time, and for Paris in particular, he emphasises the public programme of free-to-see events outside of the fair’s walls. “In Paris, we really insert ourselves into the institutional fabric,” he says. He cites the outdoor sculptures that extend through the Jardin des Tuileries during the fair, a collaboration with the Musée du Louvre, and a project with the Palais d’Iéna for a show of work by Michelango Pisteletto and Daniel Buren.
Part of de Bellis’s role is to manage the balance between the distinct Art Basel brand and what he describes as the “flavour” of its individual fairs, delivered by their more “embedded” directors. For Paris, he notes, a third of the galleries in the Art Basel fair have a space in France — though he disagrees the notion that, as more and more international galleries open in the capital, this distinction could become more diluted. Instead, he says of the incoming galleries, “Paris has come back as an art centre, it is really blossoming.”
De Bellis is supportive of other fairs in town during Paris+ par Art Basel. Among his highlights for next week are Design Miami, which opens its first edition in the French capital (October 18-22, L’hôtel de Maisons). (Art Basel’s owner, MCH Group, has a small stake in the design fair’s parent company.) His other recommendation is Paris Internationale, a not-for-profit, nomadic fair for emerging galleries and artists, which opens its ninth edition (October 18-22, Centrale téléphonique Le Coeur).
Naturally, de Bellis reserves most praise for his own Paris fair, much of which he describes as “museum-quality”. Among his highlights is a solo showing of seven privately owned works from 1930-53 by the complex and eye-catching French Modernist Jean Hélion (1904-87) at Applicat-Prazan. The gallery is marking its 30th anniversary with its Paris+ stand, which it is calling a “florilège” (anthology) of Hélion’s work. These works, priced between €450,000 and €4.5mn, will be part of the artist’s solo show in the city’s Musée d’Art Moderne next year and are offered at the fair on condition that their new owners respect the commitment to the museum show, confirms gallerist Franck Prazan.
While the look and feel of the fair is more classic than some of the other Art Basels on the circuit, New York’s PPOW, one of six new exhibitors to the fair’s main section, brings an alternative flavour to the 20th-century showings with a booth that takes a new look at the relationship between the artists and lovers Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowicz. De Bellis sees this as chiming with the ongoing Over the Rainbow exhibition at the Centre Pompidou (until November 13), which focuses on the struggles of LGBT+ artists in the 20th century.
Prazan says that Art Basel brought two things to the mix last year, namely a strong brand and its capacity to entice visitors who might not have been to Paris before. But he notes, “Don’t forget that Paris+ is not completely new. It took the place of a fair that already existed [Fiac, founded in 1974], which was a good one.” He sees this as symptomatic of the nature of the art scene in Paris. “It has been a market for a long time with buyers, galleries and museums, and now it is growing,” he says. France’s art market was worth a record $5bn in 2022, according to the Art Basel/UBS art-market report, making it the world’s fourth-largest. (This compares with the UK’s 2022 total of $11.9bn.)
Growing too, in fact, is the fair. Its second edition is also its last edition in the Grand Palais Éphemère, a temporary location while the original Grand Palais undergoes renovations and gears up for the 2024 Olympics. Next year’s fair will have room for about 25 per cent more exhibitors than this year’s 154, de Bellis says, describing the building as “the most outstanding place to do a fair”. This year, however, is definitely not an in-betweener, he says: “We will just have even more reach then.”
