{"id":9897,"date":"2026-02-17T03:44:55","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T03:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/9897\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T03:44:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T03:44:55","slug":"art-basels-smallest-fair-has-big-ambitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/9897\/","title":{"rendered":"Art Basel\u2019s smallest fair has big ambitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the October 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Art Basel Paris has been reinventing itself. The fair began in 2022 with a hastily organised event as Paris+ par Art Basel and held its first two editions in the Grand Palais \u00c9ph\u00e9m\u00e8re, a temporary space used while the Grand Palais itself was being prepared to host the Olympics. Last year\u2019s fair was the first to take place in the Grand Palais and this year\u2019s will do so too, even though renovations are not fully complete. More change is on the way: the fair\u2019s director since 2022, Cl\u00e9ment Del\u00e9pine, recently announced that he is leaving the role after this year\u2019s edition. \u2018It\u2019s been a ride,\u2019 he tells me when we speak in late August, but \u2018this is as close as it gets for a normal edition for us.\u2019<\/p>\n

The fair is the smallest in Art Basel\u2019s roster \u2013 a \u2018jewel box\u2019, Del\u00e9pine calls it. Yet it is a significant undertaking, with more than 200 exhibitors from 41 countries displaying a range of modern and contemporary work. The exhibitors are grouped into three sections: Galeries, Emergence and Premise (which focuses on thematic displays) and among the galleries are 29 newcomers \u2013 \u2018quite a statement\u2019, Del\u00e9pine says, given the \u2018fierce\u2019 competition for space. These include Lodovico Corsini from Brussels, showing works by the Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani and Cape Town-based Stevenson, which is bringing works produced in South Africa in the 1990s. New collaborations are in the pipeline too, a standout being a booth by Jeffrey Deitch and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, presenting work by the mid-century artist Bob Thompson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Art Basel Paris has an ambitious remit: as Del\u00e9pine says, a fair is \u2018a transactional platform\u2019 but also a tool of \u2018soft power\u2019 that can show off the strength of the French art market. It is important to Del\u00e9pine that the fair has a \u2018French flavour\u2019 and that this message is heard \u2018beyond the walls of the Grand Palais\u2019 and not just by the clientele who are there to buy. The public programme is a major part of this: this year it includes a project organised with Miu Miu at the Palais d\u2019I\u00e9na, spearheaded by the artist Helen Marten. In the Grand Palais itself, the \u2018Oh La La!\u2019 project, first seen last year, allows a curator to stage a \u2018creative rehang\u2019 of works, forging a \u2018narrative arc\u2019 that runs through the fair as a whole; this year the guest curator is the prominent film-maker and fashion writer Lo\u00efc Prigent.<\/p>\n

One of the things that really excites Del\u00e9pine is when a gallery \u2018commits to a solo presentation. I find it incredibly audacious.\u2019 Among the highlights here are Commonwealth and Council, bringing a display by Gala Porras-Kim; and newcomer Cr\u00e8vec\u0153ur, which is showing work by the Japanese painter Yu Nishimura. With the artist now represented jointly by Sadie Coles and David Zwirner, Del\u00e9pine refers to Nishimura as one of those artists who will be \u2018harder to get in future\u2019. Art Basel Paris has its fair share of established artists and galleries, but it prides itself on nurturing talent too \u2013 as Del\u00e9pine puts it, \u2018the cool, rising galleries that you see exhibiting upstairs are the blue-chip, established galleries of tomorrow.\u2019<\/p>\n

Art Basel Paris<\/a> takes place in the Grand Palais, Paris, from 24\u201326 October.<\/p>\n

Gallery highlights<\/p>\n

Walter Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui
Until 19 December
Piano Nobile, London<\/p>\n

More than 80 works by Sickert are on display here, all from the collection of Herbert and Ann Lucas. These include oils and prints inspired by travels in Dieppe and Venice, and one of five oil versions of his famous vision of repose, Ennui (c. 1913\u201314), as well as three etchings of the same scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stan Douglas: Birth of a Nation and The Enemy
of All Mankind
Until 1 November
Victoria Miro, London<\/p>\n

This is the European premiere of Birth of a Nation, the Canadian artist\u2019s latest film installation, which presents clips from D.W. Griffith\u2019s notorious white supremacist film of the same name (1915) in a chopped up, distorted fashion. The film is presented alongside several photographs from Douglas\u2019s recent series The Enemy of All Mankind, which comprises highly staged, theatrical images inspired by Polly (1777), the comic opera written by the 18th-century satirist John Gay.<\/p>\n

Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts
20 October\u201322 November
Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris<\/p>\n

Inspired by the abandoned cars and rusting gas station signs he saw on a trip to Houston in 1985, Rauschenberg embarked on what would be his last sculpture series, a witty group of assemblages fused from old car parts, stop signs and other scrap metal picked up both in the United States and, later, on a trip to Naples. The series was last seen together in public at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in 2010; the artist\u2019s centenary is an apt moment to reunite them.<\/p>\n

\"\"Greek Toy Glut (Neapolitan) (1987), Robert Rauschenberg. Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris. Photo: Ron Amstutz; \u00a9 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation\/ARS, New York, 2025<\/p>\n

Chris Huen Sin-kan: The Path and The Fog, Part II
Until 10 November
Matt Carey-Williams, Porchester Place, London<\/p>\n

The Hong Kong-born artist\u2019s practice, inspired by the techniques of Chinese ink painting, involves meticulously layering marks of colour on large-scale sheets of paper to create works that appear at
once frenzied and composed. The second part of The Path and the Fog series, on show here, consists of nine works that draws on everyday life, from dog walks to family breakfasts.<\/p>\n

Fairs in Focus<\/p>\n

1-54
16\u201319 October
Somerset House, London<\/p>\n

More than 50 exhibitors \u2013 mostly from the Global South \u2013 are returning to Somerset House for the 13th edition of the UK\u2019s pre-eminent fair for modern and contemporary African art. Special projects this year include an event curated by Art Comes First, a global collective dedicated to the preservation of African craft through fashion and design.<\/p>\n

Highlights International
Art Fair
16\u201319 October
Munich Residenz<\/p>\n

The Munich Residenz is once again hosting Highlights, a fair that deals in art and artefacts from antiquity to the present. More than 50 exhibitors are participating this year, showing everything from a 19th-century Russian desk to works by 20th-century artists including Marc Chagall and Josef Albers.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sleeping Beauty (2025), Delphine Desane. Luce Gallery, on show at 1\u201354. Courtesy the artist\/Luce Gallery; \u00a9 the artist<\/p>\n

From the October 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the October 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe\u00a0here. Art Basel Paris has been reinventing itself. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5222,77,2262],"class_list":{"0":"post-9897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basel","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-basel","10":"tag-premium"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}