9 Exciting Shows to See in Paris During FIAC Week, From a Tubular Charlotte Perriand Tribute to Mickalene Thomas’s Empowered Pinups

There’s plenty to look forward to when the Paris art fair FIAC
returns to the Grand Palais next week. Attractions include not just
the big fair itself, but a plethora of other events coinciding with
it in the City of Lights in October.

One conspicuous new arrival in Paris will definitely be a
talking point: Jeff Koons’s gift to Paris, Bouquet of
Tulips. Collectors and curators will, no doubt, be making
a detour to the Petite Palais to see the work deserves the
critical brickbats it has so far received. The US artist’s
multicolored monument was unveiled earlier this month.

Another addition to the Paris scene can be found on the
outskirts of the city. Called Komunuma, after the Esperanto word
for community, it is a new arts quarter in a former factory in the
north of Paris. Housing commercial galleries, artists’ studios, and
a vast exhibition hall, Komunuma is the brainchild of eight
Paris dealers and institutions. To coincide with FIAC
week, it will be presenting its inaugural shows. Time will tell
whether collectors will flock to a venue beyond Paris’s ring road,
the Boulevard Périphérique.

What is certain is that during FIAC week there is plenty to see
and discover across the French capital. Check out our highlights
below.

Charlotte Perriand at
Fondation Louis Vuitton
October 2, 2019 to 24 February
24, 2020

A photograph of the designer Charlotte Perriand reclining on a
tubular steel and leather chaise lounge is a defining image of
1920s modernity. This vast exhibition, filling 11 galleries and
four floors of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, celebrates Perriand’s
many achievements and long career. The woman who broke the glass
ceiling of modern interior design had an eventful career. She
escaped France in 1940 by heading East, briefly working as the
official adviser on industrial design to the Japanese government.
That commission was cut shot by the war, but she went on to land
plumb jobs afterwards, including designing for Air France. Around
200 of Perriand’s designs are on show along with a similar number
by her collaborators and contemporaries, who included Le
Corbusier.

Fondation Louis Vuitton is located
at 8 Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, 75116 Paris.

Mickalene Thomas at Galerie
Nathalie Obadia
September 25 – November 16, 2019

New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas’s new paintings and
collages at Galerie Nathalie Obadia attempt to diversify the
representation of African-American women in art and pop culture.
Her exhibition “Jet: beautés du mois” tries to reclaim the subjects
of the pinup calendar (specifically ones from 1970s-era issues
of Jet Magazine) by layering them with
silkscreen printing, enamel, and rhinestones to partially obscure
their bodies.

Galerie Nathalie Obadia is located at 3 rue du Cloître
Saint-Merri 75004, Paris.

Jesse Darling at Sultana

October 13 – November 23, 2019

For the artist’s second solo exhibition at the Parisian gallery,
Darling will present an array of sculptural work. Darling explores
themes of power, healing, otherness, the body, and disability.
Their Paris exhibition includes works first shown in their Tate
Britain solo show “The Ballad of St. Jerome” last year, along with
a delicate, eloquent sculpture of wilted flowers.

Sultana is located at rue Ramponeau, 75020, Paris.

Katinka Bock at Lafayette
Anticipations
October 9, 2019 – January 5, 2020

Despite the fact that Katinka Bock’s been exhibiting at
institutions worldwide, the show currently on view at Lafayette
Anticipations is the artist first major exhibition in Paris, where
she is partly based. The German sculptor recovered large amounts of
copper from an historic domed building in Hanover to create her
monumental new work. Each piece contains the traces of history,
including dents from bomb shrapnel, decades upon decades of
scratches from birds, and the patina of pollution. Most striking of
all is a delicately floating, copper-plated sculpture in the
atrium, which hangs like a massive chrysalis.

Lafayette Anticipations is located at Fondation d’entreprise
Galeries Lafayette 9, rue du Plâtre F-75004 Paris.

Glenn Brown at Musée
National Eugène Delacroix
October 9 – December 9

The UK artist Glenn Brown is
presenting new works at the lush setting of the Musée Delacroix as
part of FIAC’s Hors Les Murs program. Brown’s sinuous drawings,
paintings, and sculptures are inspired by historic art as much as
contemporary popular culture. Here, Brown is presenting a large
sculpture and drawings inspired directly by this museum’s
namesake.

The Musée National Eugène Delacroix is located at 6 rue de
Fürstenberg, 75006 Paris.

Tony Oursler at Fondation
Cartier pour l’art contemporain
October 15 – October
20

As part of the exhibition “Trees” at the Fondation Carier, the
acclaimed video artist Tony Oursler is exhibiting a new
site-specific video installation in the institution’s garden. For
Eclipse, Oursler will bring the surrounding trees to life
by projecting images of performers onto them at dusk, creating an
enchanted forest where the trees become a center for dissent, and
onlookers are invited to contemplate the relationships between
technology and nature.

Fondation Cartier pour l’art
contemporain is located at 261 boulevard Raspail F-75014
Paris.

Kiki Smith at Monnaie de
Paris
October 18 – February 9, 2020

Jeff Koons isn’t the only major
US sculptor making their presence felt in Paris this fall. Kiki
Smith gets her first major survey in the French capital.
Two of Smith’s sculptures will
stand in the courtyards of the Monnaie de Paris. Around 100 works
in a variety of media will fill two floors of the former mint turned art center
that overlooks the Seine. Smith, who started out making models for
her father, the sculptor Tony Smith, first came to prominence in
the 1980s with feminist artworks commenting on the female figure
and women’s relationships with the natural world. Her works here
range from the miniature to the monumental.

Monnaie de Paris is located at 11 Quai de Conti, 75006
Paris.

“Future, Former, Fugitive”
at Palais de Tokyo
October 16 – January 5, 2020

This group exhibition with a difference aims to show the
diversity of French artists, many of whom you have probably never
heard about before. Curators from the Palais de Tokyo have ventured
beyond established names and art market darlings to reveal the
“vast and complex surface of the French landscape.” Artist with
“atypical trajectories” include rising stars such as Mali Arun, who
won the Grand Prix du Salon de Montrouge last year, and Linda
Sanchez, the winner of the 2018 Prix des Amis du Palais de Tokyo.
More established artists include Marc Camille Chaimowicz.

Palais de Tokyo is located at 13 Avenue du Président Wilson,
75116 Paris.

Prix Marcel Duchamp at
Centre Pompidou
October 9 – January 6, 2020

Works by nominees of France’s most prestigious contemporary art
prize are on show in the Centre Pompidou’s gallery 4. This year’s
shortlist includes Eric Baudelaire, Katinka Bock (who also has a
show on at Galeries Lafayettes), Marguerite Humeau, and
collaborative duo Ida Tursic & Wilfried Mille. The winner, which
will be announced on October 14, will receive a cash prize
of €35,000 ($38,000) and will join such illustrious previous
winners Cyprien Gaillard, Kader Attia, and Tatiana
Trouvé.

Center Pompidou is located at Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004,
Paris.

The post 9 Exciting Shows to See in Paris During FIAC Week,
From a Tubular Charlotte Perriand Tribute to Mickalene Thomas’s
Empowered Pinups appeared first on artnet News.