Love, humor, and transgression. These are a few of the themes artists will be exploring as part of the new Oh La La! initiative at Art Basel Paris. Injecting new energy into the fair, 35 gallerists will transform their booths and hang new, unusual, and thought-provoking works on the Friday and Saturday of the fair. Here are seven highlights that are not to be missed.

Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Sergei Eisenstein
‘The rhythm of ecstasy: the sex drawings, 1931-1948’

Hailed as the father of cinematic montage, Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein has long been celebrated for his visionary films. It is less known, however, that he was also a prolific artist. From sketching caricatures during his youth to designing costumes for theater productions, drawing was an important practice throughout his life. Eisenstein’s little-known series of ‘Sex Drawings’, the majority of which he sketched while working on a film in Mexico in the early 1930s, will be on display at Amsterdam-based gallery Ellen de Bruijne Projects. Spanning from the humorous to the perverse, the sketches depict uninhibited scenes with participants engaging in carnal fantasies with other humans, animals, and inanimate objects.

Massimodecarlo
Maurizio Cattelan, Paola Pivi, and Thomas Grünfeld

Italian gallerist Massimo De Carlo – who opened his first gallery in Milan in 1987 – will take a walk down memory lane at his booth. On display will be pieces by some of the first artists he signed. At the heart of the presentation will be Cattelan’s A Perfect Day (1999), a comical large-scale photograph depicting the dealer De Carlo plastered onto the wall with layers of thick gray tape. A glistening wall relief by Italian artist Paola Pivi made of cascading strands of artificial pink pearls will also be on view, as well as a rubber and wood blob-like sculpture, Gummi (1999), by German sculptor Thomas Grünfeld.

Air de Paris
Bruno Pélassy

Trained as a jewelry and textile designer, which led to a stint working at Swarovski, the late French artist Bruno Pélassy is known for his salacious sculptures. His brief artistic career was tragically cut short at the age of 36 when he passed away from an AIDS-related illness. His work Bye Bye Jeff (1998), a beaded phallus sculpture, will be the centerpiece of Air de Paris’s booth. Rising upwards, the glistening serpentine form is adorned with glass beads, crystals, and semi-precious stones. The fragile phallus was inspired by the pornographic film actor Jeff Stryker, who created products such as a dildo cast from his genitalia. During the fair, the gallery will launch a new monograph on Pélassy. Air de Paris will also present an olive-studded sculpture by Gaëlle Choisne, one of this year’s Prix Marcel Duchamp nominees.

Layr
Käthe Kollwitz

At Layr, visitors will discover a somber work by the pioneering German artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945). Kollwitz once said, ‘It is my duty to voice the sufferings of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high.’ Suffused with sorrow, her raw drawings, ink-stained etchings, and stark woodcuts are a testament to this statement. Living in 1920s Berlin, Kollwitz was confronted by the abject poverty of her physician husband’s working-class patients. The anguish of the people she encountered, as well as her own personal losses, fueled her art. From grieving women to ailing children, she sought to capture people’s everyday struggles and dignity; her empathetic works continue to resonate today.

Galeria Plan B
Anca Munteanu Rimnic

Romanian-born, Berlin-based artist Anca Munteanu Rimnic’s works dance around the act of viewing. Stepping into Galeria Plan B’s booth, viewers will see In and I (2015), a mirror shrouded in a fine organza fabric. The piece distorts their reflections, which appear cloudy through the veil of white cloth. While this work piques curiosity and encourages interaction, Frame (2009) may have almost the opposite effect. The durational performance features an actor gazing closely at what appears to be a blank white painting on the wall, almost becoming an element of the gallery's booth itself. Together, these works reflect the artist's longstanding interest in the relationship between an artwork and those who look at it. 

Galleria Raffaella Cortese
Marcello Maloberti
La Conversione di San Paolo (2024)

Viewers may think twice before entering Milan-based gallery Galleria Raffaella Cortese’s booth as the floor will be covered in sacred images. Italian artist Marcello Maloberti has plastered the ground with some of the earliest images of Jesus, drawn from Russian icons and Byzantine mosaics. Titled La Conversione di San Paolo, the installation is made of an eye-catching reflective gold material. While we often gaze up to contemplate the divine, Maloberti has reversed this process and brought the celestial down to our feet. As viewers walk on the glistening surface, the gold images will tear gradually and erode – a hint to archeology that questions the many ways we envision belief and the cornerstones of contemporary civilization.

Galerie Max Mayer
J. Parker Valentine

Galerie Max Mayer shines a spotlight on J. Parker Valentine’s ethereal work. Centered around the practice of drawing, the Texan artist's works range from raw graphite drawings on large MDF panels to cut-up canvases which are stitched together and enveloped with ink washes and quivering ghostly lines. She has also experimented with sculpture, creating delicate gestural works that use copper wire to suspend muslin marked with color pencil and graphite. Despite being static, her work is full of movement and evokes the very process of artistic creation.