Art Paris, the city’s major spring contemporary art fair founded in 1999, continues to expand the boundaries and possibilities for exhibiting contemporary art with this year’s event at the Grand Palais from 18 to 22 March.  Art Paris + Guests was a collaboration of art galleries with other creative entities, and not just limited to the art market.  The idea of having a “guest” component to the fair this year was to promote networking between varieties of cultural factions.  The exhibitions showed how contemporary art is so closely linked to other creative fields, including architecture, fashion design, gastronomy, cinematography, and music.  Art Paris + Guests highlighted the importance of that interdisciplinary communication.

Art Paris + Guests was designed to encourage the crossover between all different elements of the international art scene.  Furthermore, Art Paris + Guests welcomed emerging global art markets such as Indonesia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and featured these diverse international art scenes with special platforms. Out of 106 exhibitors at the fair, 71 galleries came from France, and 17 countries were represented altogether.  The seven platforms included the countries Indonesia, Ukraine, Finland, the continent Africa, two Parisian platforms featuring Marais and Rive Gauche galleries, and finally a platform for four young, “ultra-contemporary” European galleries from Brussels, Berlin, Milan, and Paris.  Indonesia’s platform, organized by the collector Deddy Kusuma, “The Grass Looks Greener Where You Water It,” included a diverse range of artistic media as Indonesia asserts itself as a strong player in the international art world.

Agus Suwage, Luxury Crime, 2007-2009

Innovation was the name of the game at this year’s Art Paris.  Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication, explained:

« At the turn of the XXIth century, an event of this kind, reaffirms the phenomenal vitality of Paris on the international artistic scene. This fair presents exclusive projects: the stands, conceived as platforms dedicated to a country or a theme, facilitate a dialogue between different arts and horizons…The glass roof of the Grand Palais will reveal the perpetual metamorphosis of contemporary arts to bedazzled spectators. »

Tags: art market, Art Paris, Art Paris + Guests, contemporary art, contemporary art fair, international art scene