"Emerging galleries": global expression

LC Queisser (Tbilissi) invites visitors to rediscover the drawings and paintings of the Georgian artist Elene Chantladze, born in 1946. Marfa’ (Beirut) defends the project of the Lebanese photographer Mohamad Abdouni, whose installation on the lives of trans people in the SWANA (South-East Asia and North Africa) region appeared at the 16th Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon in 2022. Parliament (Paris) displays a new series of ceramic sculptures by Charlotte Dualé which take the form of totems and assemblages. Sans Titre (Paris) has chosen to promote the paintings and videos of a young American artist, Sequoia Scavullo – a young graduate of the Beaux-arts de Paris – following her first museum exhibition at Kunstverein Bielefeld in Germany in 2022. This is the first time that the artist’s work is being displayed as part of a fair. Her solo show explores the theme of water and its therapeutic and mystical powers. Meanwhile, the booth of Seventeen (London) features an immersive video installation by Joey Holder mingling “cryptozoology and queer ecology”.

Among the newcomers participating for the first time in any of the four Art Basel fairs are Fanta-MLN (Milan) and the Austrians Felix Gaudlitz (Vienna) and Gianni Manhattan (Vienna). Bank (Shanghai) will screen an unprecedented video by the Chinese artist Lu Yang. Document (Chicago, Lisbon) makes a début at Paris+ with “Deep Pressure”, a solo show of the Indonesian collective Tromarama. Its booth is fully lined with the wallpaper designed for their multimedia installation. Emalin (London) highlights the hyper-realistic paintings of the Polish artist Karol Palczak, while Galeria Stereo (Warsaw) shows the figurative works of another Pole, Tomasz Krecicki. Performance art by the Spanish artist Loreto Martínez Troncoso brings life to the booth of PM8 - Francisco Salas (Vigo, Spain); conceptual works by Noah Barker, exploring the theme of surveillance, appear at Fanta-MLN; and a satirical installation by Jenna Bliss takes centre stage at the booth of Felix Gaudlitz. The spectrum of young creation worldwide is quite vast, while the prices are mostly situated between 15,000 and 20,000 euros.

There is more at stake at the event. It could be a springboard for any of the participating galleries. Four of the galleries representing the “Emerging” section in 2022 were able to join the principal section in 2023 (Antenna Space of Shanghai, Carlos/Ishikawa of London, and two Parisian galleries, Anne Barrault and Édouard Montassut). As for the artists, they hold the hope of being honoured by the jury of the Galeries Lafayette group, the official partner of this selection. Each year, Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation Galeries Lafayette awards a prize to an artist and invites them to a residency to create a work which will be presented at the Fondation the following year during the fair. The winner of last year’s edition, Akeem Smith – represented by the Heidi Gallery, Berlin, who attended Paris+ last year – will inaugurate his exhibition “One Last Cry” at Lafayette Anticipations on October 16th.