Foreign galleries pull out all

Around thirty of them are involved in this sector, including Casey Kaplan (New York), which presents an exclusive show by South African textile artist Igshaan Adams. And Sfeir-Semler (Hamburg, Beirut), which is on show at Frieze London the previous week, is exhibiting a wide range of artists from the Middle East and North Africa, including Samia Halaby, Walid Raad, Wael Shawky, Tarik Kiswanson and Taysir Batniji, several of whose works are currently on show at the MAC Lyon as part of the Lyon Biennial. Among the sensations of the fair, Ólafur Elíasson’s monumental Power tower (2005/2023), a luminous stack of geometric forms, rises four metres above the walls of neugerriemschneider (Berlin), while Michel Majerus’s large-format painting Globol Spex groupie de luxe (1994) - presented in 1996 at the Kunsthalle Basel for his first institutional exhibition - occupies the entire width of the stand. Capitain Petzel (Berlin) intends to highlight works expressing “socio-political concerns”, such as the abstract paintings of Amy Sillman and the symbolically “engaged” works of Monica Bonvicini, Jack O’Brien and Andrea Bowers. However, the exhibition is anchored by two paintings by Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) and Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997): “timeless” pieces priced at up to €1.5 million. The stand of Peter Freeman Inc (New York) includes, in addition to a selection of works by the gallery’s own artists, a pair of drawings by Cy Twombly and a painting by Sigmar Polke (priced from €22,000 to €1.1 million). The gallery presents also a new bronze by Thomas Schütte, Tribute to Moondog (2024), in the garden of the Palais-Royal, as part of the public programme. This installation coincides with the gallery’s reopening in Paris in new premises (at 7, rue de Montpensier, opposite the entrance to the garden): the gallery opens its doors for a temporary exhibition, before reopening in spring 2025. Beware of spells: Pace (New York) has entrusted the scenography of its stand to the artist Paulina Olowska, whose work explores the theme of witchcraft around the figure of Mamuna, halfway between the female demon and the mischievous elf, a theme also present in the works of Kiki Smith, Lucas Samaras and Louise Nevelson. At Bortolami (New York), a landmark 1990 installation by Renée Green entitled Seen is the centrepiece of the stand, which will also feature a painting by Daniel Buren dating from 1966, the year he began using his characteristic stripes ($1.5 million). The Vedovi (Brussels) stand features works by René Magritte (Le sourire du diable - €3,900,000), Lucio Fontana (Concetto Spaziale, 1960, €520,000) and Tom Wesselmann - a painting from the ‘Smoker’ series, the price of which will not be disclosed here. Acquavella (New York) promises a dizzying display with, among the most remarkable works, Yellow Panel with Red Curve (1989) (see Ill.), an important painting by Ellsworth Kelly, Henri Matisse’s Tête de femme penchée (Lorette) (1916-1917), Joan Miró’s Harlequin (1935), Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Big Snow (1984), a tribute to Olympic athlete Jesse Owens, and Wayne Thiebaud’s Double Scoop (1998), which appeared on the cover of The New Yorker in 2020. As for the Landau Fine Art gallery (Montreal), it is showcasing its treasures in the setting of an extraordinary 3.5-metre-high cedar portal, made up of 16 hand-carved panels: masterpieces by René Magritte, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet and a rare painting by Alexej von Jawlensky (Spanische Tänzerin, 1909), recently acquired by the gallery. There is no shortage of resonances with current institutional events. Galerie Konrad Fischer is referring to the “Arte Povera” exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce, with works by Mario Merz and Giuseppe Penone, and to the Thomas Schütte retrospective at MoMA (prices up to €400,000). Can we see works by young artists on the stands of the foreign galleries at this edition of Art Basel Paris? Yes, for example at Barbara Wien (Berlin), this drawing (€5,500) and this suitcase-shaped sculpture The Weight of thought (€24,000) by Walter Price, who joined the Zwirner gallery last May, and whose price could well rise. Also on the stand is an installation of fabrics dyed with turmeric by a young artist, Dan Lie, winner of the National Gallery 2024 prize. Among the solos of note is one by Eva Presenhuber (Zurich, Vienna) devoted to the artist Tschabalala Self, who examines the iconographic significance of the black female body in contemporary culture. The installation, entitled My House, a tribute to a fictional Parisian woman of African descent, includes two sculptures, several paintings and functional art objects in the form of furniture. “Borrowing from the post-impressionist aesthetic of French modernist painters such as Henri Matisse, I have created a disquieting environment, representing a fake house”, explains Tschabalala Self (price €160,000-€325,000). A dozen shared stands enable galleries to split costs. The one bringing together the galleries LambdaLambdaLambda (Pristina) and Miyako Rosen (Tokyo) prefigures the forthcoming opening of their space in Paris (the two galleries already share an address in Brussels). The Tokyo gallery is showing a large-format abstract painting by Trevor Shimizu, Color Field (One), 2024 ($65,000). Finally, a number of foreign galleries have seized the opportunity offered by the “Oh La La!” programme to show new works over the weekend. Plan B is taking part with works by Anca Munteanu Rimnic, whose long-running performance Frame will be interpreted on Friday and Saturday by a “well-known” German actor as a guest star.