Many cultural events are finally back, and Parisian galleries will be able to open their doors once again on May 19th. From the Marais to Belleville through Canal Saint-Martin, some free outdoor events will also be opportunities for an artistic tribute to the 150 years of the Paris Commune.
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Belleville Artists’ Open Studios – “Récréation”
Friday 28th to May 31st
Each year since 1990, the artists of Belleville open the doors of their workshops! This year’s Open Studios will be held on May 28th-31st to explore the theme “Recreation”. The annual art walk organized the Ateliers d’artistes de Belleville – AAB is always an opportunity for an exciting cultural stroll to meet the creatives who live and work there. During four days, visitors can explore secret hidden courtyards and discrete workshops turned festive, as the atmosphere of the whole neighborhood becomes more vibrant than ever. This year’s event will bring together more than 130 artists and collectives. Their works will be visible in about a hundred workshops and galleries of this district like no other, spread across the 10th, 11th, 19th and 20th arrondissements.
Friday to Monday: 2pm-8pm – Free admission
Quartier de Belleville
Paris 10° – 11° – 19° – 20°
www.ateliers-artistes-belleville.fr
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“Les Nouveaux”
May 13th-23rd
On the eve of their open house days, the artists of Belleville are hosting a group exhibition dedicated to the 21 new members of the association: “a panel of artworks from Eastern Paris’ contemporary visual arts scene is presented as a foretaste of your visit during the 2021 Open Studios. The plurality of personal expressions is the image of a colorful neighborhood, respectful of the identities that coexist and represent it!” This event will be an opportunity to discover artworks by Atelier da Mota, Atelier des Cascades, Cyril Accorsi, Gilles Brusset, Gabriel de Vienne, Annie Deryckx, Olena Donichenko, Marie Fanget, Audrey Gayraud, Florian Jouhaud, Stéphanie Libreros, Mellvioline, Eva Romain, Francesco Romano, Emma Seneze, Terra Rossa Lab, Arnaud Thirion, Tsai Hsin-Yun, Clémence Vazard, Juan Diego Vergara, and Getachew Berhanu Yimenu.
Thursday to Sunday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie des AAB
1 rue Francis Picabia, 75020 Paris
www.ateliers-artistes-belleville.fr
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“100% L’Expo – Sorties d’écoles”
Until June 20th – Outdoors + Indoors starting May 19th
Dedicated to contemporary works by recent art school graduates, La Villette’s annual exhibition is held in the open air, with a mosaic of installations and photographs unveiled for an extended period around the Grande Halle. This year, Paris’ “cultural park” welcomes visual artists Charlotte Denamur, Valentin Guillon, Amandine Guruceaga, Prosper Legault, Louise Mutrel, Ji-Min Park, Gwendoline Perrigueux, and Leila Villmouth. Along the gallery, between Avenue Jean Jaurès and the Canal de l’Ourcq, visitors can also travel through series by photographers Adeline Care, Louis Desnos, Elsa Leydier, Robin Plus, Gaël Silière, and Heng Zheng. New performances and installations will be visible in the Grande Halle after May 19th.
Grande Halle de la Villette and surroundings – Free admission
La Villette
Parc de la Villette, 75019 Paris
lavillette.com
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“Frontières”
May 27th – June 1st
For their second Parisian exhibition dedicated to contemporary creation by young artists, Les Nouveaux Collectionneurs invite us to the Espace Voltaire to discover the works of more than thirty artists from Paris and elsewhere. They translate and question “the commitments of some artists in the face of social and societal questions related to the environment, migratory identity, and the way they look at the urban landscape and its identities” – including contributions by Jeanne Varaldi, whom we had the chance to interview. Using a wide variety of techniques (painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, engraving, etc.), the exhibition “refers as much to the tangible as to the intangible by treating the border as a passage, a bridge separating reality from the imaginary and encouraging an encounter with the other”. This “artistic, associative and charitable project” will see part of the profits from the sale donated to the association Bibliothèques sans frontières, committed to providing access to education and culture to vulnerable populations.
Thursday to Monday: 11am-7pm – Fre admission
Espace Voltaire
81 boulevard Voltaire, 75011 Paris
www.lesnouveauxcollectionneurs.com
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“Paysages tactiles”
Mau 19th – June 26th
“The exhibit “Paysages Tactiles” offers a sensorial approach to the notion of landscapes, in their physical and mental dimensions, by creating common spaces of visuals and sounds expressions, creating spaces of experiences, beyond visual restrictions. This exhibition, entirely tactile, brings together five artists (Marie-Claire Corbel, Delphine Gauly, Lamozé, Laura McCallum et Juliette Vivier) who invite us to touch, to listen, and to see different works that are as many distinctive proposals of landscapes to experiment. Through printmaking, ceramics, textiles, interactive installations and various objects, the artists seek to summon our senses, imagination and emotions, in order to question what a landscape is, beyond traditional limits of its apprehension.”
Tuesday to Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Mémoire de l’avenir
45 rue Ramponeau, 75020 Paris
www.memoire-a-venir.org
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“The Call of the Wild”
Until June 12th
In the heart of Le Marais, Galerie Sabine Bayasli gallery reunits ten young talents with the group exhibition “The Call of the Wild”. This colorful international selection will allow visitors to discover works by artists Elvire Caillon, Tristan Chevillard, Jérôme Combe, Fabien Conti, Paul Iratzoquy, Lena Keller, Thomas Lesigne, Theresa Möller, Karolina Orzełek, and Florian Viel.
Tuesday to Saturdau: 12pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie Sabine Bayasli
99 Rue du Temple, 75003 Paris
galeriesabinebayasli.com
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“Fils du temps, connexions textiles”
May 19th – July 24th
“Far from a fixed anthology of textile art, the exhibition connects contemporary creation and popular art through complementary works by a dozen artists. Weaving and yarn were once symbols of life and time. Do they remain synonymous with human connections, visible or invisible? It is precisely through thread that the featured artists try to seize, to dominate, to mark time, as if to extract themselves from it. They create links, embroider, sew, color… In a perpetual work of patience, they guide us through traditional gestures as well as contemporary technologies.”
Wednesday to Friday: 2pm-6pm (untl 8pm on Thursdays) – Saturday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Centre Tignous d’art contemporain
116 Rue de Paris, 93100 Montreuil
+33 (0)1 71 89 28 00
centretignousdartcontemporain.fr
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Jack Ardi – Solo Show
May 10-29th
Perched up the hill of Belleville, a few steps away from the Pyrénées metro station, 389 La Boutique features young artists combining illustration, pop culture, design and street art. This month, the new address features a selection of works by Jack Ardi, a “painter, self-taught graffiti artist, inspired by urban culture (skate, rap, punk …)” who has been active for a decade between Lille and the capital. The gallery will also participate in the Belleville Open Studios on May 28th-31st (see above).
Monday to Saturday: 12pm-8pm – Free admission
389 La Boutique
389 Rue des Pyrénées, 75020 Paris
www.389laboutique.com
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Gilles Balmet & his collection – “Happy Together”
May 20th – October 2nd
“Happy Together is a double exhibition dedicated to the work of artist Gilles Balmet and his surprising collection, built up over the past twenty years. The exhibition unfolds across the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin in two complementary parts. On the first floor, it presents the artist’s personal creations: these series of artworks on paper explore a territory between painting and drawing, abstraction and landscape representation. They were made without brushes, but instead following singular protocols. The second part of the exhibition, upstairs, focuses on another activity Gilles Balmet is passionate about: building up a collection of contemporary artworks, which were mainly exchanged with other artists. This rare exhibition – artist’s collections are most often an intimate practice – is composed of 150 works by 150 French and international artists.”
Tuesday to Saturday: 2pm-6pm – Entrée libre
Pavillon Carré de Baudouin
121 rue de Ménilmontant, 75020 Paris
www.pavilloncarredebaudouin.fr
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Lou Ferrand & Katia Porro – “A few tricks up the sleeve and a dagger in the heart”
May 20th-30th
“Doc invites Lou Ferrand and Katia Porro to take over the exhibition room for an experimental format around the research they are conducting on prickly forms, and their intertwining with an erotic, tactical, and political charge. At the beginning, there is a formal appetence, an emotional tropism for the pricks, the points, the spines, what cuts, what wounds, what pierces. From then on, the gaze becomes alert to the prickly; it plunges back into a history of art and literature strewn with sagittal, sharp, perforating motifs, considering their visible manifestations (the weapon, the gesture, the wound) as much as their sentimental ones (the threat, the pain – but also, and precisely, the desire). Lou Ferrand and Katia Porro have been developing a collaborative practice since 2018, including collaborative text writing, collective translation, and exhibition design. Lou Ferrand is an independent curator, currently in residence at Beaux Arts de Paris. Katia Porro is an independent curator and director of the Amant Siena residency in Italy.
From Thursday, May 20th, to Sunday, May 30th: 2pm-8:30pm – Free admission
DOC
22 rue du Docteur Potain, 75019 Paris
doc.work
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Pablo Figueroa – “Jeux de formes”
Until May 10th outdoors on Place Martin Nadaud / Until May 21st at Galerie DerniersJours
The gallery DerniersJours welcomes Chilean artist Pablo Figueroa, who unveils about fifteen works in the charming Saint-Blaise neighborhood. His “Jeux de formes” are also exhibited in other streets of the 20th arrondissement: in partnership with Kickart, DerniersJours has launched a project of “gallery hors-les-murs” which will see several creations of Pablo Figueroa go on excursions on the colorful Place Martin Nadaud until May 10th. A double opportunity to discover the artist’s tribute to the symbols and geometry of the kite, which “transcends borders and generations and invites us to find our naive and universal souls”.
Wednesday to Friday: 4pm-7pm – Saturday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Place Martin Nadaud
75020 Paris
Galerie Derniers Jours
5 rue Saint-Blaise, 75020 Paris
derniersjourscom.wordpress.com
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Arash Hanaei, Anaïs Lelièvre & Thomas van Reghem – “Bordures / Failles”
May 15th – July 27th
More inforation to come.
Tuesday to Friday: 2pm-7pm – Saturday: 1pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie La Ferronnerie
40 rue de la Folie-Méricourt, 75011 Paris
www.galerielaferronnerie.fr
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Cécile Hartmann – “Le Serpent Noir”
May 19th – July 18th
“Le Serpent Noir” is a documentary project by artist and director Cécile Hartmann, who set out to follow the trail of the Keystone pipeline across the Great Plains of the United States and Canada. Four years after the resistance of the First Nations at Standing Rock and Sacred Stones against the nearby threat of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the artist “shares the archive of this ‘time after’, where the struggles have already given way to the first alterations of the landscape and life forms”. The Keystone XL extension project was back in the news in January, as the new administration revoked the extension permit that would have seen the pipeline expand across Montana and Alberta, on the land of the Sioux and Blackfeet. Scheduled to run until next summer, the exhibition “Le Serpent Noir” brings together photographs, sculptural elements, wall-painting and silkscreens.
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday: 1pm-6pm – Saturday & Sunday: 12pm-6pm – Free admission
MABA – Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz
16 Rue Charles VII, 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne
+33 (0)1 48 71 90 07
www.fondationdesartistes.fr
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Alain Keler – “America”
Until June 12th
Alain Keler arrived in the United States in 1971 at the age of 26. After a series of odd jobs, he managed to buy a Leica M3 camera to “take photographs in his spare time, at the height of the crowds, in the streets of New York or Washington, during the second inauguration of Richard Nixon, between protests and celebrations”. In 1997, he became the second French citizen to receive the William Eugene Smith Photojournalism Award. Some of the pictures presented in this “rediscovered exhibition” had to wait three or four decades before being developed: Fisheye Gallery invites us to “dive into the images of a young enthusiast who would become the photographer we know”.
Wednesday to Friday: 2pm-7pm – Saturday: 11:30am-7pm (on appointments until May 19th) – Fre admission
Fisheye Gallery
2 Rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis, 75010 Paris
+33 (0)1 40 37 24 19
www.fisheyegallery.fr
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Lulù Nuti – “Terrain amère”
May 19th – July 3rd
Somewhere between Rome and Paris, the artist Lulù Nuti “designs sculptures and installations to dialogue with space, and question our perception of reality, the transformation of habits, and our relationship to nature and the environment”. The exhibition “Terrain amère” is the second personal project of the artist featured at Chloe Salgado Gallery, a stone’s throw from Place de la République. From March 20th, using wood and metal, pencils and pastels, she will take us to “a story lulled by intimate reminiscences, between remembrance and nostalgia”.
Wednesday to Saturday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie Chloe Salgado
61 Rue de Saintonge, 75003 Paris
www.galeriechloesalgado.com
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Stéphane Parain – “Apophénie”
Starting May 22nd
“Taking the form of sculptures or installations, Stéphane Parain’s work is influenced by the aesthetics of classical sculpture, the scenography of theater sets and urban art. In his work, he questions the transitory aspect of the material by relying on temporality, the organic and the structural, in order to bring to light a world where the invisible and the fantastic meet.”
Tuesday to Sunday: 1pm-7pm – Free admission
Opening with the artist on May 22nd
Atelier Nanoh
22 rue Jules Vallès, 75011 Paris
nanoh.art
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Alex Pariss – “À nos yeux sensibles”
May 7th-16th
By Place des Fêtes, Doc offers a multi-sensory artistic experience around the undulatory works of visual artist Alex Pariss. In “À nos yeux sensibles”, visible by appointment from Friday, May 7th, the geometric contrasts of his gouaches and acrylics lead to “a succession of disconcerting optical effects, where the entanglement of forms prevents us from discerning the harmony of chaos”. The exhibition is accompanied by a sound atmosphere imagined by Parisian composer Emma Seegoolam, an invitation to “enter a state of receptivity conducive to the observation and sensitive understanding of the works”.
Friday, May 7th, to Sunday, May 16th – 1pm-7pm – Free admission (appointment online)
DOC
22 rue du Docteur Potain, 75019 Paris
doc.work
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A century and a half ago, the revolutionary experience of the Paris Commune entered its last moments. In memory of those 72 days during which the people of the capital were able to forge their own path, many exhibitions, conferences, historical tours, and artistic performances are organized this spring (complete article). Several exhibitions are held in Easter Paris, at the same time a cradle of the insurrection and the site of its last barricades,:
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“La Commune de Paris – A tribute by the artists of Ménilmontant”
Until May 28th outdoors – May 28th-30th at the gallery
The Artists of Ménilmontant are paying tribute to the spring of 1871: after all, with Montmartre, Belleville, and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the neigborhood was a cradle of the revolution. These events and exhibitions, which will include invited artists, aim to highlight “different creative forms”: painting, drawing, sculpture, etc. Many mural works can already be seen in the open air on the walls of the district, from Place Gambetta to Parc de Belleville. Finally, the artists association’s gallery on Rue Boyer will welcome a special exhibit from Friday, May 28th, to Sunday, May 30th.
Outdoors around the neighborhood – Free admission neighborhood
Ménilmontant Neighborhood
Rue Boyer, Rue de la Mare, Rue des Plâtrières, 75020 Paris
Galerie Ménil’8
8 rue Boyer, 75020 Paris
ateliersdemenilmontant.org
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“Les Damnés de la Commune, sur les traces d’une révolution”
Until June 30th at Pavillon Carré de Baudouin – Complementary exhibit from May 4th to July 2nd at Mairie de Paris Centre
Based on the graphic artworks of Raphaël Meyssan, who collected thousands of 19th century engravings over the last eight years, this open-air exhibition plunges us into the history of the Commune through images of that era. Parisians will surely recognize “streets, squares, buildings that we thought we knew and are loaded with history: the Folies-Belleville where people dreamed of changing the world before the insurrection, the Hôtel de ville that became the beating heart of the city during the Commune, Place Vendôme whose column, symbol of wars, was torn down, the Père-Lachaise and the last fights of the Semaine sanglante…”
Outdoor
Pavillon Carré de Baudouin
Rue des Pyrénées & Rue de Ménilmontant, 75020 Paris
quefaire.paris.fr
Mairie du Centre
2 rue Eugène Spiller, 75003 Paris
quefaire.paris.fr
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“Communardes”
May 6th-29th
The Françoise Sagan media library will host for nearly three weeks the exhibition “Communardes”, which brings together some twenty portraits of actresses of the Parisian revolution of 1871, taken shortly after its terrible repression. These prints were obtained using the cyanotype technique. As part of this event, the mediatheque will also organize an introductory workshop on this photographic process on Saturday, May 29th (registration required), as well as a historical tour through the 10th arrondissement, in the company of the philosopher Anouk Colombani, on Saturday, May 15: an opportunity to discover the major contributions of the women of Paris in the insurrection, particularly in this neighborhood of the capital.
Tuesday to Sunday: 1:30pm-5:30pm – Free admission
Médiathèque Françoise Sagan
8 rue Léon Schwartzenberg, 75010 Paris
quefaire.paris.fr
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“Nous La Commune”
Until May 7th at Gare de l’Est / On May 11th-27th at Parc des Buttes-Chaumont
The artist Dugudus has created about fifty large-scale portraits of personalities associated with the Paris Commune (Louise Michel, Gustave Courbet, etc.), as many women and men representing the people of a Paris in revolution. Through this mosaic of figures full of character, the outdoor exhibition “We the Commune” aims to “reflect, in their diversity, the crowd of the insurgents”. The portraits are accompanied by historical anecdotes describing each personality and its contribution to the insurrectionary experience of 1871.
Outdoor
Gare de l’Est
Place du 11 novembre 1918, 75010 Paris
quefaire.paris.fr
Parc des Buttes-Chaumont
Face à la mairie du 19ème, rue Manin, 75019 Paris
quefaire.paris.fr
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“1871, les 72 jours de la Commune”
Until My 27th at Jardin Villemin / May 27th to June 28th by Mairie du 11ème
Through twenty outdoor panels, this exhibition revisits the uprising of the spring of 1871, describing in turn its main stages, from the hopes of a nascent revolution to its tragic repression. It also illustrates some of the most significant decisions of the Commune: free and secular education, separation of church and state, new social rights, rent relief, and the requisitioning of vacant apartments to shelter Parisians in need. The exhibition, which can also be viewed online, was produced by the historical committee of the city of Paris under the direction of Roger Martelli, with the contribution of the association Les Amies et Amis de la Commune de Paris.
Outdoor
Jardin Villemin
14 rue des Récollets, 75010 Paris
quefaire.paris.fr
Mairie du 11ème arrondissement
Place Léon Blum, 75011 Paris
quefaire.paris.fr
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Illustrations (cropped) :
G : Silicium 2, 2021 © Anaïs Lelièvre – Galerie La Ferronnerie
D : Ballade visuelle n°2 © Alex Pariss – DOC
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