Looking for a cultural break? From the Marais to Romainville through Belleville and La Villette, we’ll be your guide for this month’s selection of art exhibits!
Ateliers d’Artistes de Belleville Open Studios 2024
May 23rd-26th
Each year since 1990, the artists of Belleville open the doors of their workshops to the public! This year’s Open Studios will be held on May 23rd-26th. The event 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 usually discrete workshops, as the atmosphere of the whole neighborhood becomes more festive. This year’s Open Studios will bring together 156 artists and collectives. Their works will be visible in about a hundred workshops and galleries of Belleville, a district like no other spread across Paris’ 10th, 11th, 19th and 20th arrondissements.
Thursday to Sunday: 2pm-8pm – Free admission
Belleville Neighborhood
75010 / 75011 / 75019 / 75020 Paris
www.ateliers-artistes-belleville.fr
Brecht Evens – Le Roi Méduse
Until May 4th
“The galleries of Brecht Evens are full of royal figures. They line up in a sumptuous cloud, points of a pattern which is always being made, which is always returning. They are born and escape from mythologies, literatures, paintings of masters, folklore and carnivals to permeate the general fresco. Some majesties are only sketches, queens of a night or kings of the playground; others are necessary. Most often, they command the people of a shimmering night, where sky and ground lend themselves ideally to distortions and other visual aberrations. […] And there is King Medusa , a new asset that Brecht Evens places at the center of his moving, floating game table. Master card in which its own echo resonates (“medusa” comes from the Greek μέδω, médō , which means “to reign”), it intimates the plurivalence of the worlds that the artist likes to open and close, suggest and strike, dilute and tighten depending on the techniques, colors and compositions.” — Cathia Engelbach
Tuesday to Saturday: 2:30pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie Martel
17 rue Martel, 75010 Paris
www.galeriemartel.com
Marie Guillard – Eaux Troubles
May 2nd to June 15th
“Marie Guillard’s Eaux Troubles is an exhibition full of elegance, suspense, and sensuality! As always, the narrative approach is very present in her creations, but this latest exhibition is specific in the way it can be read as much as seen: Marie conceived it as a tale with the atmosphere of a detective story, featuring three characters, a letter, and a dark lake with no reflections… The scenario is singular, not set in stone, its story like a fragmented dream, with scenes following one another without chronology or temporality, making sure the exhibition can be explored freely. For Marie, ‘there was a need to offer elements to tell a story, but these elements are interchangeable, like a puzzle where all the pieces have the same shape’.”
Monday to Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Slow Galerie
5 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011 Paris
www.slowgalerie.com
Thomas Lévy-Lasne – L’impuissance
Until May 11th
“Thomas Lévy-Lasne presents his second exhibition at Les filles du calvaire gallery, following L’asphyxie (Asphyxiation) in 2020. This time, he returns with L’impuissance (Impotence) in the gallery’s new space on Rue Chapon. In line with the theme he favors, which he calls the end of the mundane, he will showcase a collection of paintings and drawings reflecting on our contemporary world, ‘in search of an aesthetic adapted to the time of climatic drift, disanthropocentric and sensitive to the tragic loss of what is still there’.”
Tuesday: 2pm-6:30pm – Wednesday to Saturday: 11am-6:30pm – Free admission
Galerie Les filles du calvaire
21 rue Chapon, 75003 Paris
www.fillesducalvaire.com
Randa Massot – De la magie des arbres
Until May 30th
“Randa Massot began painting by exploring the role and power of emotion and memory, expressing what is not said, but felt. From her practice of letting go came her creative process. She doesn’t pre-draw her subjects, but lets them emerge on paper through the tip of her brush. The fluidity of water-based painting techniques plays a key role in her practice, which she has extended to natural pigments, etching, and photography. Echoing her 19th-century peers who explored themes of nature during the industrial age, for her, imagination, nature, and artistic creation are sources of resilience in the age of the digital revolution. Her works question the relationship between humans and nature, the changes brought about by global warming, and the preservation of trees. Her works also evoke the human fascination with the beauty of nature. From Asian traditions, she draws balance and purified simplicity, within a dreamlike universe influenced by Hokusai, Rilke, Bonnard, Redon, and Saint-Exupéry.”
Tuesday to Sunday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Péniche L’eau et les rêves
9 quai de l’Oise, 75019 Paris
www.penichelibrairie.com
Bimbamerica
Until May 18th
“Welcome to Bimbamerica, a free and independent land defined by its artists. Through a selection of paintings, drawings, and ceramic sculptures, this group show presents a variety of individual visions of our current time, harmoniously coexisting on the same territory. Until May 18th, it brings together works by artists Heather Benjamin, Jeffrey Cheung, Devra Fox, Rachel Hayden, Hydeon, Kevin Sabo, Jeffrey Sincich, and Hannah Wilson.”
Wednesday to Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Bim Bam Gallery
23 rue Béranger, 75003 Paris
www.bimbam.gallery
Les Nouveaux
May 2nd-12th
On the eve of their annual art walk, the Ateliers d’Artistes de Belleville gallery welcomes the exhibition Les Nouveaux, dedicated to the most recent members of the association: Emmanuel Benito, Franck Bertran, Roland Brauchli, Sophie Charlotte Capdevielle, Elisa Giacometti, Françoise Haegel, Diana Kraay, Florence Léger, Nicolette Moya, Aurelia Peñafiel, Sonia Said, Raul Villullas, et Elsa Wolf. Most of them will take part in the association’s 35th Open Studios by opening their workshops at the end of the month.
Thursday to Sunday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie des AAB
1 Rue Francis Picabia, 75020 Paris
www.ateliers-artistes-belleville.fr
Vieilles coques & jeunes récifs
Until July 21st
“The title of the exhibition, Vieilles coques & jeunes récifs (Old Hulls & Young Reefs), refers to several metaphors: the body as a shell destined for decay, potentially challenged by the beautiful coral that replaces it or, on the contrary, revives it. Organized in two sites of Frac Île-de-France (Le Plateau and Les Réserves), this group show brings together artworks by Alex Ayed, Jimmy Beauquesne, Bruno Botella, Eglė Budvytytė, Nina Canell, Nicolas Faubert & Mona Young-eun Kim, Garance Früh, Robin Girod, Hedwig Houben, Camille Juthier, Taus Makhacheva, Ibrahim Meïté Sikely, Tracey Moffatt, Isadora Neves Marques, Ceylan Öztrük, Clara Pacotte, Hatice Pinarbaşi, Prune Phi, Camilo Restrepo, Colin Self, Ketty Steward & L. M. Cantori, Zin Taylor, Eden Tinto Collins, Jeanne Vicerial, and Laure Vigna.”
Le Plateau : Wednesday to Sunday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Les Réserves : Wednesday to Saturday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Frac Île-de-France – Le Plateau
22 rue des Alouettes, 75019 Paris
Frac Île-de-France – Les Réserves
43 Rue de la Commune de Paris, 93230 Romainville
www.fraciledefrance.com
Les Mondes imaginaires
Until December 15th
“The Espace Monte-Christo takes us to a narrative and poetic dimension with its new exhibition. Thanks to a selection of over 50 sculptures by French and international artists, Les Mondes imaginaires (Imaginary Worlds) is an invitation to broaden your horizons through a dreamlike journey designed like a story in several chapters. […] In his immersive installation, La Famille des Hybridus, Jean-François Fourtou, the exhibition’s carte blanche artist, presents over a dozen part-human, part-plant figures illustrating, with poetry and nostalgia, moments in life inspired by the Belle Époque, and projecting an idyllic image of a humanity in symbiosis with nature.”
Wednesday to Sunday: 11am-6:30pm – Free admission
Espace Monte Cristo
9 rue Monte-Cristo, 75020 Paris
fondationvilladatris.fr/espace-monte-cristo
You found this article useful? Don’t hesitate to read our call for solidarity and to support us to help Paris Lights Up remain accessible for everyone!
Illustration (cropped) :
Exhibit art – Le Roi Méduse at galerie Martel
© Brecht Evens