11 oct 2021

Calder Place Vendôme, Grand Palais Éphémère, Tuileries: what does FIAC have in store for this year?

After a blank year in 2020, the FIAC is back in Paris and is taking over the space of the Grand Palais Éphémère for the first time. As usual, the international contemporary art fair offers a rich program on site, but also in the four corners of the French capital. Discover the five highlights of its 47th edition.

Alexander Calder, “Flying Dragon” (1975). Metal sheet, bolts and paint. 9.1 × 17.1 × 6.6 m. © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Darren James Photography

2. A sculpture by Alexander Calder on the Place Vendôme

 

 

A setting that now hosts the greatest luxury houses in the heart of the capital, the Place Vendôme has also been the site of memorable installations during the fair for the past nine years. After the works of contemporary artists Paul McCarthy (2014) and Elmgreen & Dragset (2018), or the giant pumpkin of Yayoi Kusama (2019), this one will host for the first time the work of a modern artist: Alexander Calder. With the help of Gagosian, one of his “stabiles”, monumental abstract sculptures, will transform the famous square.

 

 

From October 19, 2021 to January 2, 2022,  Place Vendôme, Paris 1st.

1. The FIAC installed at the Grand Palais Éphémère

 

 

While the Grand Palais has just closed its doors for four years of work, the FIAC is now forced to abandon its historic site for the first time since 1978. In the Grand Palais Éphémère, a temporary architecture designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte on the Champ-de-Mars, the International Contemporary Art Fair will hold its 47th edition with more than 160 galleries from 26 countries, including some thirty new exhibitors.

 

 

From 21 to 24 October at the Grand Palais Éphémère, Paris 7th.

Marion Verboom, “Achronie 25” (2021). © Nicolas Brasseur

3. About thirty open-air works of art in the Tuileries Garden

 

 

A free walk in the open air in the middle of works of art, this is what the Tuileries Garden has been offering for fifteen years now. On the sidelines of the fair, the park located between the Louvre Museum and the Place de la Concorde is decorated every year with pieces from various periods, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. This year, about thirty projects will be on display, such as the structures designed by the architect Jean Prouvé or the sculptures by the visual artists Eric Fischl and Marion Verboom.

 

 

Until October 24 at the Tuileries Gardens, Paris 1st.

4. Carte blanche to Jean Claracq at the Delacroix Museum

 

 

At the age of 30, Jean Claracq is part of the new guard of French figurative painting. Meticulous and enigmatic, his very small canvases evoke both Van Eyck and Jeff Wall, while their youthful characters embody the attitudes of a form of modern melancholy. An approach that has aroused the interest of the Eugène-Delacroix Museum, where the works of the nineteenth-century romantic painter are in dialogue, this autumn, with those of this representative of a contemporary romanticism around the same theme: youth.

 

 

From October 17 to November 1, Paris 6th.

“Coeurs simples”, exhibition view, Untitled (2016). Courtesy of the artist and Untitled (2016), Paris

5. FIAC continues online

 

Cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic, the FIAC was forced to reinvent itself online. At the beginning of March, the fair offered its first entirely digital edition hosted on a new platform where more than 200 galleries composed their virtual stands. A success that led the fair to renew the approach a few months later, in parallel with its physical edition. It was an opportunity for participants to expand their stands and exchange with those who will not be able to travel to Paris this week.

 

From 21 to 24 October on fiac.viewingrooms.com