![\"Edouard](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_3841.jpg\")
Edouard Merino and Florence Bonnefous in Paris in 2013. All images courtesy of Bonnefous and Merino.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\tEdouard Merino and Florence Bonnefous in Paris in 2013. All images courtesy of Bonnefous and Merino.<\/p>\n
After 36 years, over 400 exhibitions, and projects with nearly 50 artists, the radical, pop-conceptual gallery Air de Paris has declared bankruptcy and will shutter its doors this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In late April, Florence Bonnefous<\/a>, who founded Air de Paris with Edouard Merino in 1990, walked me through what would be the gallery\u2019s last show in Romainville, the Parisian suburb the gallery has called home since 2019. Titled \u201cOh What a Time,\u201d it was a not-so-subtle hint at the pending closure and a celebratory gesture of the gallery\u2019s underground, eclectic punk legacy, with works by Joseph Grigely, Amy Vogel, Allen Ruppersberg, Pierre Joseph, Mona Varichon, Pati Hill, Lily van der Stokker, and Trisha Donnelly. Bonnefous, one of the art world\u2019s preeminent curator-dealers, sourced most of the pieces from her own collection; she\u2019d returned everything else to the artists. \u201cThe only people I owe money to are my landlord and the bank,\u201d she told me in soft-spoken French.<\/p>\n Since the gallery\u2019s first, now iconic exhibition, which contributed to critic Nicolas Bourriaud\u2019s theory of \u201crelational aesthetics,\u201d Air de Paris has nurtured and broken open byways for critically challenging and emerging forms of engagement with art and life. As artists and Bonnefous told me, this was achieved through deep relationships\u2014and little thought for personal financial gain.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAir de Paris brought so many ideas and artists to all of us\u2014ones that might have disappeared in the vanilla-ish speed of the art world if it had not been for them,\u201d the American artist Trisha Donnelly wrote me over WhatsApp.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bonnefous and Merino decided to close mainly because of the gallery\u2019s \u201cfragile\u201d financial circumstances, Bonnefous\u2019s health (she has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), Merino\u2019s own fluctuating health, and a simmering refusal to participate in the increasingly profit-driven, \u201cmanagerial efficiency\u201d of the art industry, which eventually boiled over.<\/p>\n \u201cLittle by little, we realized we wanted to do things differently, and while reasons for closing are a mix of many things, it was also very important for us to distance ourselves from how the art market has developed,\u201d Bonnefous said. A year ago, the gallery founders withdrew from Art Basel in Basel after their booth was downgraded. In a letter<\/a>, they criticized a \u201ctrend towards a more corporatist model\u201d of art dealing. Still, in recent years, helped by close institutional and collector relationships, \u201cwe tried to continue without opting for the easy path forward, or money-making,\u201d said Bonnefous. \u201cWhat is more surprising is that we lasted as long as we did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Bonnefous also no longer has the bandwidth or desire to do the hustling required to sell under the gallery\u2019s current circumstances. \u201cThe moment you no longer want to do it, [financial] decline logically follows. It\u2019s something that has to be constantly maintained,\u201d she said, adding that she \u201cwould rather spend more time having picnics with artists.\u201d<\/p>\n For so much of its roster, the gallery was a second home, offering an empathetic ear and carefully thought-through solutions to develop their practice and build exhibitions that were never ordinary. Air de Paris \u201cunderstood the stories that run through my life, and the art that (sometimes) comes out of it. I\u2019ve always said that it\u2019s a gallery that understands what it means to be an artist, not only from the point of view of production,\u201d said interdisciplinary French artist M\u00e9gane Brauer. \u201cTransfem\u201d installation artist Mona Filleul explained that Air de Paris had provided rare guidance and care while she faced \u201ctransphobia within the contemporary art world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The gallery\u2019s \u201cartists are an assemblage of misfits who have little in common except their ability to make art unlike the art of others: Ben Kinmont, Trisha Donnelly, Shimabuku, Brice Dellsperger, Sarah Pucci\u2014all of them were pathfinders, something that Flo and Edouard recognized early,\u201d said Joseph Grigely, who has a solo show<\/a> on view at the Palais de Tokyo through September.<\/p>\n Air de Paris was an early champion of the practices of now-household names like Sturtevant, Dorothy Iannone, Philippe Parreno, Carsten H\u00f6ller, Paul McCarthy, Liam Gillick<\/a>, Pierre Huyghe, and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. In recent years, it has also staged the first gallery shows for emerging artists including Brauer and Filleul. Bonnefous plans to continue working with some artists from the gallery, while managing the estates of Iannone, Pucci, Pati Hill, Bruno Pelassy, and Guy de Cointet, plus curating various exhibitions, including one in her home in the Limousin region.\u00a0<\/p>\n Filing for bankruptcy \u201cis a little brutal,\u201d admitted Bonnefous, \u201cbut we like the term.\u201d It reminded her and Merino of a cheeky 1968 poster<\/a> by George Brecht and Robert Filliou, announcing the shuttering of their Fluxus art space outside of Nice, the city where Air de Paris first opened in 1990. In orange-typed French, it reads: \u201cThere\u2019s always someone out there making a fortune, and someone going\u2026 BANKRUPT (us in particular).\u201d Bonnefous said she\u2019s reappropriating that poster as a concluding artistic gesture for Air de Paris\u2019s own send-off.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n More of our favorite stories from<\/b> CULTURED<\/b><\/p>\n![\"Florence](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/C6A45424-670E-48E5-B43A-80AE0D110F76.jpg\")
Bonnefous and Merino in Monte Carlo. Photography by Guillaume De Sardes.<\/p>\n![\"Helmut](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/@1990-photo-Helmut_Newton.jpg\")
Helmut Newton, Philippe Parreno, Ingrid Berthon-Moine, Philippe Perrin, Edouard Merino, Ingrid Luche, Florence Bonnefous and Pierre Joseph in front of Air de Paris, Nice, 1990.<\/p>\n![\"Florence](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_1099-scaled.jpg\")
Florence Bonnefous and Edouard Merino with Commercial Break by Fran\u00e7ois Curlet, 2016.<\/p>\n