Looking for a cultural break? From the Marais to Romainville through République and Bastille, we’ll be your guide for this month’s selection of art exhibits!
Jean-Christophe Adenis – L’année dernière
Until February 7th
“Not all the paintings presented here were created in the previous year. They do, however, refer to an uncertain period, “last year”, an expression that is sometimes used to evoke what is not yet a memory, but is no longer part of the present times or of current interest. Last year is the place where the sorting out of everyday events begins, most of which are doomed to disappear. These images may remain, escaping erasure.”
Monday: 1:30pm-7pm – Tuesday: 9am-12:30pm & 1:30pm-7pm – Wednesday: 9am-12pm & 1pm-7pm – Thursday: 1:30pm-7pm – Friday: 9am-12:30pm & 1:30pm-6pm – Saturday: 9am-12am & 13pm-5pm – Free admission
Centre Paris Anim’ Maurice Ravel
6 avenue Maurice Ravel, 75012 Paris
www.jeanchristopheadenis.com
Christine Boulanger – Les coulisses de ma ville
Until March 19th
“Les coulisses de ma ville (Behind the scenes in my city) is a collection of 15 sketched portraits, accompanied by my conversations with clean-up workers. At first glance, the title may seem paradoxical: garbage collectors, drivers and waste disposal workers move just like us on the stage of the great theater that is Paris. Dressed in green, they are perfectly recognizable. But how much do we really know about these men and women? And when we see them, how do we look at them? The exhibition invites us to reconsider the people we pass every day without really looking at them. Whose faces have we taken the time to draw? These portraits come with stories, written in a conversational tone. They reveal in different ways the daily life of a profession, illustrating values such as solidarity and care for oneself, others, and our environment. The people portrayed – Anne, Emmanuel, Éric, Franck, Jean-Charles, José, Mebrouk, Nadir, Nathalie, Patrice, Sylvie, Sabrina, Sohayb, Stéphane, and Thierry – put their trust in me, despite their initial reservations about being part of an exhibit. Their dearest wish: to make their jobs better known, in the interests of everyone, cleaners and residents alike.” — Christine Boulanger
Outdoors – Free admission
Square Gardette
2 rue du Général Blaise
Alioune Diagne – Seede
Until February 24th
“For Seede, which means “the witness” in Wolof, Diagne spent several weeks visiting the Senegal coastline. His canvases echo the stories of local fishermen who, equipped only with a pirogue and a net to do their work, are seeing growing foreign industrialisation of the fishing business. As Alioune Diagne explains: “To survive, some of them have had to abandon their traditional skills and resort to the illegal practice of people smuggling.” The deep blue colour and handful of fishing nets covering the walls and floor of the Paris space give the exhibition an immersive not to say dramatic feel. “These are subjects I want to talk about,” says the artist.“Emigration is still a painful reality today. Up till now, people only envisaged living a successful life in Europe or the USA. I want to show the younger generations that it’s possible to have a future in Africa.” Since 2011, Alioune Diagne’s work has featured in a variety of solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Africa and Asia. In April 2024, the artist will have the honour of representing his country on the Senegalese Pavilion at the 60th Art Biennale International Art Exhibition in Venice.”
Tuesday to Saturday: 10am-7pm – Free admission
Templon Paris – Beaubourg
30 rue Beaubourg, 75003 Paris
www.templon.com
Marie Dorigny – Des vies traversées
Until March 20th
“Marie Dorigny began her photographic career in December 1989, documenting the Romanian revolution. Her reports on child labor, contemporary forms of slavery, and the condition of women in developing countries have been featured in international newspapers and magazines. Her latest work, Displaced, femmes en exil, produced in 2016 for the European Parliament, features refugee women. Marie Dorigny’s photographs have been exhibited at Visa pour l’Image, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, and more recently at the Parlementarium in Brussels.”
Tuesday to Friday: 2:30pm-7pm – Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
L’Atelier/Galerie Taylor
7 rue Taylor, 75010 Paris
atelier-galerie-taylor.fr
Ndayé Kouagou – A Change of Perspective
Until February 18th
“The Frac Île-de-France presents Ndayé Kouagou’s first solo exhibition in France in such a venue. His different practices revolve around language, without establishing any hierarchy between them. From the tangible form of a painting to videos evoking the world of influencers, to the intimate and ephemeral nature of performances and workshops, his work gives equal consideration to transmission via objects, performances, and educational formats. Engaging with the other is central to his need to create. A self-taught artist, his work is driven by a desire for dialogue and openness, a yearning to allow others to dream for themselves.”
Wednesday to Sunday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Frac Île-de-France – Le Plateau
22 rue des Alouettes, 75019 Paris
www.fraciledefrance.com
Magdalena Lamri & Andreas Senoner – Genesis
Until February 24th
“After studying ancient and contemporary fresco techniques at ENSAAMA Olivier de Serre in Paris, visual artist Magdalena Lamri set up her studio in Montreuil. Her work is rooted on the border between dream and reality. Tinged with melancholy and dreaminess, it plays with paradoxes and dualities (shadow/light, dream/reality…). It lifts the veil on our contemporary fears, our hopes too, and delivers a singular, sublimated world, from which the human is often absent. Using charcoal, Magdalena Lamri builds forests, cabins, imaginary spaces… all refuges synonymous with dreams and poetry. / Andreas Senoner lives and works in Florence, Italy. Wood is a permanent feature as a material of expression in his artistic practice. Senoner focuses his sculptural research on a series of key themes: metamorphosis, heritage, and stratification. For his artworks, he selects and uses unique materials, mainly from animal and plant sources, wood, feathers, lichen, fabric, beeswax, always bearing in mind their history and process of creation and evolution.”
Tuesday to Saturday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie Sabine Bayasli
99 rue du Temple, 75003 Paris
galeriesabinebayasli.com
Sarah Meunier – As you like it
Until February 29th
“Nothing better than Shakespeare’s play to illustrate this exhibition. At a time when only men were allowed to play roles on stage, Shakespeare presents a woman disguised as a man, played by a man disguised as a woman. It is this irony, intrinsic to life, that resonates here. “All the world’s a stage”, he said, and the main character is none other than the madman. So let’s be crazy! Let’s dare to be that creature that lights us up and shines!” — Sarah Meunier
Wednesday to Saturday: 3pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie Ephémère du Centre Tignous d’art contemporain
1 rue Kléber, 93100 Montreuil
www.sarahmeunierportfolio.com
Françoise Pétrovitch – Dans mes mains
Until March 9th
“I observe young people in museums, or in the street, both in France and abroad. These images are snapshots of today’s world. These teenagers rarely look at each other, nor do they exchange a great deal verbally, yet they come together, almost blending into one another. Their identities merge in intense friendships, where each is the reflection of the other. The backgrounds are painted in broad strokes, they contain no details, they are pure color, as with Ingres, who I often think of. I really admire the modernity of his female figures, the care and precision given to the details of the clothing, the folds and pleats, the embroidery and even the corseting of 19th century women, I have to admit. I tried to depict the graphic lines that criss-cross the bodies of these teenagers. I tried different ways of framing the figures and various points of view, from both above and below. The colors are drawn from the palette I’m currently using: acidic green, mauve, orange and charcoal blue.” — Françoise Pétrovitch
Tuesday to Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Semiose
44 rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris
semiose.com
Louison Robinet & Pierre-François – Illustrations and graphic novels
Until March 2nd
More information to come.
Monday to Wednesday: 8am-1:30am – Thursday & Friday: 8am-12pm – Samedi : 9am-2am – Sunday: 9am-12am – Free admission
Aux Tables du Père Lachaise
44 boulevard de Ménilmontant, 75020 Paris
Bruno Serralongue / Avec Mégane Brauer, Burn-Août, François Curlet, et Suzanne Husky – Le Présent
Until March 3rd
“The present isn’t necessarily the present of the news cycle. The present is described in the exhibition as the current zeitgeist in France, characterised by the Earth Uprisings movement as a driving force for radical change. It is the need for civil disobedience against a state deemed too slow, or even inactive, in facing environmental challenges. Works by Mégane Brauer, Suzanne Husky and François Curlet also raise questions about peripheral territories and populations — where overconsumption meets the supernumeraries. In its own way, this exhibition is about survival.” — Bruno Serralongue
Tuesday to Saturday: 10am-6pm – Free admission
Air de Paris
43 rue de la Commune de Paris, 93230 Romainville
www.airdeparis.com
Amy Steel – Out Of Thin Air
Until March 2nd
“Bim Bam Gallery proudly presents Amy Steel’s first solo show in France titled Out Of Thin Air. Her new series of oil paintings on canvas invites us to enter dreamlike natural landscapes, which the English artist describes as spaces of desires. The flamingo and the woman, their feet plunged in water, are the two recurrent figures in this exhibition, exploring the ideas of sensuality, identity, and emancipation.”
Wednesday to Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Bim Bam Gallery
23 rue Béranger, 75003 Paris
www.bimbam.gallery
Stella Sujin – Femmes lisant la nuit parmi les fleurs du jardin
Until February 24th
“Korean artist Stella Sujin, a nominee for the 2023 Drawing Now Prize, has produced a series of watercolors exploring the themes of the invisible and the bizarre, inspired by witches, hybrid creatures and medieval woodcuts. […] In medieval Spain, the brotherhood of the blind was made up of visually impaired peddlers who chanted fantastical and often lewd poems at the top of their lungs. Sujin pays homage to these messengers of the invisible – the figures whose oral tradition gives us a glimpse of what is hidden, kept out of sight – with a free interpretation of two texts used as references for the entire exhibition: La Danse aux Aveugles by Pierre Michault, a collection of medieval poems with a phantasmagorical feel, and strongly colored medieval woodcuts, including those featured in Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. The result is a picaresque house of mirrors steeped in the Middle Ages and its troubadours, jesters and acrobats. Sujin seeks to recount the invisible by making it visible, showing what the blind see. […] Animals sing and play the violin, witches contort themselves, fish with the heads of bishops pose in a contemporary Garden of Earthly Delights. […]”
Tuesday to Saturday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Backslash Gallery
29 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, 75003 Paris
www.backslashgallery.com
Aurélie Wilmet – Rorbuer / Épinette noire
Melek Zertal – Lassitude Lounge
Until February 24th
“During a residency in Canada, Aurélie Wilmet became interested in the links between the different people living in this immense territory, and in particular the Inuit of Nunavik. A subject that forms the backdrop to Épinette Noire, an ambitious tale somewhere between voyage of initiation and modern tale. Magnified by a virtuoso use of alcohol markers and colored pencils, this adventure to the far north summons up the spirit of Jack London and the graphic ardor of Simon Roussin, for a work of flamboyant beauty. / Lassitude Lounge is the first major exhibition to focus on the work of cartoonist Melek Zertal, now based between Paris and Oakland, California. The exhibition features her clean lines, delicate color palette and emancipated heroines in short, introspective sequences. It brings together works produced since 2018, with particular emphasis on the transition from original drawing to printed result. It coincides with the release of the new version of the Today’s Special comic book, made by Studio Fidèle and originally published by Perfectly Acceptable in Chicago.”
Monday to Saturday: 12:30pm-7:30pm – Free admission
Galerie Arts Factory
27 rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris
www.artsfactory.net
Corps à corps – Histoire(s) de la photographie
Until March 25th
“Bringing together more than 500 photographs and documents by some 120 historical and contemporary photographers, Corps à corps (Body to body) offers a unique insight into photographic representations of the human race in the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition goes beyond the traditional categories of study such as “portrait”, “self-portrait”, “nudes” and so-called “humanist” photography. It reveals the particularities and “photographic” ways of seeing, showing the connections between artists. It brings to light common obsessions in ways of addressing the subject and stylistic approaches. The images on display also question the photographer’s responsibility: how does photography contribute to the birth of identities and their visibility? How does it recount individualities, the relationship with the Other?”
Every day except Tuesdays: 11am-9pm (until 11pm on Thursdays) – €17/€14/€0
Centre Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou, 75004 Paris
www.centrepompidou.fr
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Illustration (cropped):
Exhibition view – A Change of Perspective at Le Plateau – Frac Île-de-France
© Ndayé Kouagou