Art Paris 2023

Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire 

Paz Corona’s paintings explore associations of ideas, references, and situations that she attempts to resolve through her art. Her work combines three narratives that shift from one reality, one plane, and one state of consciousness to another. The first narrative involves Corona’s recent films made in Chile against the backdrop of an insurrection. The second narrative is a scene from the Buster Keaton film, where the main character’s lover is pulled out of a mailbag. The third narrative centers around the figure of “Alice,” who constantly disappears and reappears from different realities. The painting of Alice kneeling on a block represents an introspective questioning of how to escape from disorder and find meaning in life.

Nosbaum Reding Gallery

Damien Deroubaix’s art is influenced by both the Renaissance masters and modern artists like Picasso and Baselitz. His work includes classic themes such as death, warriors, and female nudes, which he revisits in the context of contemporary events like the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine. Deroubaix’s style incorporates elements of popular culture and heavy metal music, resulting in a dark and acerbic visual language. His 2020 piece, “Untitled,” features an armless, genderless figure walking in front of the American flag and a bird’s wing. The scene, devoid of humanity, represents lost dreams and unfulfilled hopes. Despite its bleak subject matter, the painting’s expressionist execution captures the viewer’s attention and is a powerful work of art.

Praz-Delavallade

Sépànd Danesh, a French Iranian artist, uses his art to critique and bring attention to the ongoing political turmoil in Iran and the Middle East, as well as in the West where he has resided since the mid-90s. His paintings are typically composed of a corner with two walls and no floor or ceiling, which symbolizes both a dead end and a possible escape. Danesh uses this framework to create tragicomic scenes featuring pixelated figures that parody contemporary society. In his work, “The Bird of Misfortune,” Danesh denounces the Ayatollah Khamenei and the death penalty in Iran. The painting is a representation of the artist’s own life, where part of his family was executed after a failed coup d’état against the regime of the mullahs in 1980. Overall, Danesh’s work is a commitment to defending the rights and liberties of the Iranian people.

Galerie Carole Kvasnevski

Angèle Etoundi Essamba’s photographic portraits explore the complex status of African women, showcasing their pride, strength, and self-awareness for over 35 years. Her black and white photos create contrasts that imprison these women in ambiguous stereotypes. In some of her recent works like “Couronne en dentelle 2” and “Jeu de formes” (2020), she uses historical European clothing like lace collars to contrast against black backgrounds, rendering the models almost invisible. Through her work, Etoundi Essamba aims to redefine our relationship with identity and difference by exploring the symbolic and aesthetic dimensions of the female body. She celebrates the uniqueness and singularity of the body, while acknowledging its plurality and universality.

Galerie Kaléidoscope

Jacques Grinberg, born Djeki Grinberg in Bulgaria, was a leading representative of the Nouvelle figuration movement in the 60s and 70s. This movement was fiercely anti-establishment and outside of any framework, with a permanent state of revolt. Grinberg’s figurative approach to painting was aggressive, biting, and cruel, with a radical anti-bourgeois and anti-militarist stance. He used vibrant colors to denounce the armed forces, seen as torturers and fascists in a barbaric 20th century. Le Casque prison (1964) and Fasciste – Tête de Rat (1984) are two examples of his work, painted twenty years apart but employing a similar execution.

Galerie Nathalie Obadia

Laura Henno is a politically driven artist who captures the lives and struggles of people on the fringes of society through photography and film. She focuses on isolated communities such as migrants and displaced persons and uses a documentary approach to explore their creative dimension of resistance and survival. Her works feature expressive faces, bodily postures, and the play of light, subverting the genre’s rules. In her project, The Story Teller (2012), she documents the experiences of unaccompanied or undocumented teenagers in France who use storytelling to convince NGOs and judges to grant them recognition. Henno’s art gives voice to those who cannot speak for themselves.

Galerie Eric Mouchet

Kubra Khademi, a multidisciplinary artist, creates her art by exploring the struggles and resources available to women in Islamic society. Her work is heavily influenced by her status as a woman and refugee, and her experiences growing up with a difficult relationship with her mother and sisters. Khademi’s art also draws from ancient Persian civilizations and her time at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore. Her controversial public performance of “Armor” in Kabul led to her fleeing to France. Khademi’s drawings of women aim to represent female strength and sexual power as a divine force, instead of the negative portrayal that is often imposed upon women.

Paris-B

Randa Maroufi is a self-described “undisciplined” multidisciplinary artist who works with photography, video, performance, and sound to explore contemporary social realities. Her work involves using imagery to question the relationship between individuals and their surroundings, as well as the limits and occupation of certain spaces. Maroufi’s reputation was established with her film, The Park (2015), which was inspired by social media photos and examined the relationship between men, their image, and virility. In Bab Sebta (2019), a series of reconstructions based on Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Moroccan soil, Maroufi explores trafficking and the women involved in it, using their image to represent individual resistance.

Galerie Maïa Muller

Hassan Musa’s art often draws inspiration from Josephine Baker, who represented various cultural and societal contradictions present in French society during the interwar period. Musa’s work reflects similar contradictions, weaving together cultural narratives, politics, economics, social change, and memory. Through his art, he highlights unsaid things and explores the status of media and arts icons. Dante de Lampedusa II (2019) is an example of Musa’s work, which reimagines Delacroix’s La Barque de Dante and portrays a journey to hell across the contemporary Mediterranean. With a clever play of convergences, juxtapositions, and superpositions, Musa’s paintings bring to life disturbing reminiscences of the world’s meanders.

Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger

Paul Rebeyrolle’s paintings are instinctive, generous and powerful, and they established themselves on the French art scene due to their singularity and radicality. Rebeyrolle’s work defended freedom of expression, rebellion against authority, and fought against enslavement, alienation, and for the independence and emancipation of everyone. In his series “Monétarisme,” Rebeyrolle incorporated barbarous found objects such as wire and animal hide to depict a world in decline, where humans destroy each other and their relationship with the living world. However, his series “Madagascar” portrays a new-found relationship with nature and the pleasure of living, as seen in his almost magical depiction of “Le Chien blanc” (2000). Rebeyrolle believes that his two obsessions, painting and contemporary history, are inextricably entwined in him.

The Pill

Apolonia Sokol is a female painter born in the 80s, who represents a new generation of bold and adventurous women artists. She is aware of the opportunities that the history of art can offer in terms of forms and signs, and of the advantages of shifting towards figurative representation of her own world. Sokol, of Polish descent, grew up in Denmark and France, and has lived in New York, Los Angeles and Istanbul. Her paintings depict closed minimalist spaces, featuring hieratic female figures, including the artist herself, grappling with everyday life, emotions, struggles, hopes and dreams. She chooses models who inspire her, such as artists, feminist and LGBT activists, capturing their energy and intensity, as well as their fragility.

Galerie Lelong & Co

Nancy Spero, an American artist, dedicated her work to victims of totalitarianism, capitalism, and male dominance. She identified as an underground artist, active in political and social struggles. After moving to Paris in 1959 with her family, she gained attention for her work. Upon returning to the US, she denounced the government’s participation in the Vietnam War. Her interest in the work of Antonin Artaud led to two series of drawings and collages celebrating the French poet. This marked her realization of the patriarchal symbolic order of language and the importance of women’s voices. She then devoted herself to revisiting stereotypical images of women across different civilizations, tirelessly expressing and defending the cause of women.