In anticipation of the influx of collectors and curators, Parisian galleries have opened a slew of exhibitions in the days leading up to Paris+ par Art Basel – with several presented in brand-new or recently renovated spaces. Here are eight shows to see at galleries across the city that encompass all manner of media and subject matter.

Andres Serrano
‘The Doom of Beauty’
Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Marais
Through November 11, 2023

Andres Serrano’s photograph Piss Christ (1987) generated controversy for decades, especially in the United States. When the work – a photo of a small crucifix immersed in Serrano’s urine – was first exhibited, it enraged some Christians who found it blasphemous. Serrano had received a USD 20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and some believed the nation’s money should not fund ‘obscene’ art, or at least it should not support work related to religion due to the separation of church and state. But this did not scare Serrano: the majority of his work of the past four decades has commented on politics, religion, and race in the US. With the works in ‘The Doom of Beauty’, however, Serrano approaches art-historical iconography, replicating Michelangelo’s La Pièta (1498–1499) and David (1501–1504) in paint, pastels, and pencil, layered over photographs of the original works. This new series also marks the first time Serrano has exhibited paintings since attending the Brooklyn Museum Art School in the late 1960s.

Pablo Tomek
‘Sortie de piste’
Galerie Christophe Gaillard
Through November 11, 2023

‘Sortie de piste’ means to leave the track. At Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Pablo Tomek does this through the use of unconventional canvas shapes and sizes. For works like La traverse 2 and Tetris plan (both 2023), he painted on individual, irregularly shaped canvases on custom stretchers which he then pieced together to form a new whole, and finally painted atop the multiple canvases as if they were one. With the series ‘plié, déplié’ (literally ‘folded, unfolded’) (2023), he also departs from the idea of the flat, rectangular canvas: The canvas for each work is stretched around a primary base but also gathered, folded, and stapled to additional, smaller stretchers placed on top. The final three-dimensional planes are then spray-painted, a technique indicative of Tomek’s background in graffiti. Yet the artist also paints with brushes and sponges, the latter of which are honored in a series of playful large-scale polystyrene sculptures in the show.

Mamma Andersson
‘Adieu Maria Magdalena’
David Zwirner
Through November 18, 2023

The paintings in Mamma Anderson’s first solo show in Paris evoke her homeland of Sweden, with the exhibition’s title referencing a church in her Stockholm neighborhood. While landscapes feature heavily, some paintings also show rooms and walls, potential backdrops to scenes the audience is not privy to witness. However, even in these, one cannot escape the Nordic landscape: In Willy-nilly (2023), hills and waterways sneak their way in as wallpaper, and in Speculi Oculo II (2023) they appear in a looking glass.

Sun Yitian
‘Once Upon a Time’
Esther Schipper
October 18 to November 24, 2023

Esther Schipper is reopening its gallery on Place Vendôme with a solo show of new works by Chinese painter Sun Yitian. Although the 32-year-old is known for hyperrealist depictions of mass-produced products, for this show she is venturing into more Surrealist vistas. Everyday objects like shoes still play a central role in the works, but they’re now placed within dreamlike, at times even nightmarish, environments – and the products are not necessarily what you would find in most stores either.

‘I See No Difference Between a Handshake and a Poem’
Mendes Wood DM
Through November 25, 2023

Taking over two floors in one of the hôtel particuliers on the historic Place des Vosges, Mendes Wood DM opened the doors to its new Paris outpost with a large group show curated by Fernanda Brenner, the founding director of Pivô, a non-profit art space in São Paulo. The show, featuring over 30 artists, explores various expressions of ‘touching’ across time and space. It pairs recently produced works with historic pieces, ranging from Willard Van Dyke and Ralph Steiner’s 1934 short film Hands to Philipp Fleischmann’s newly produced Film Sculpture (4) (2023), where both the filmstrip and its projection form parts of the work. Other works include sculptures, photographs, and works on paper from a vast array of international artists including Tosh Basco, Nina Canell, Marguerite Duras, and Kishio Suga.

‘The First Stone’
Galerie Poggi
Through November 25, 2023

For ‘The First Stone’, Galerie Poggi has collaborated with seven other galleries, including Nicoletti, Michel Rein, and Meessen de Clercq, to show historic masters such as Eugène Delacroix and Hans Hartung alongside antiquities from ancient Greece and works by contemporary artists. The show marks the opening of the gallery’s new space directly opposite the Centre Pompidou, and in homage to this new chapter, the works are centered around the theme of creation, or as the title suggests, ‘the first stone.’ Pieces range from the figurative – like Djamel Tatah’s painting Untitled (Inv. 16002) (2016), depicting a boy holding rocks – to the abstract, like Anna-Eva Bergman’s untitled 1952 painting in which two black geometric shapes appear like rocks on a beach.

Zuzanna Czebatul
‘The Lunatic Fringe’
sans titre
Through December 2, 2023

‘The Lunatic Fringe’ marks sans titre’s second exhibition with Zuzanna Czebatul, a Polish artist living in Berlin. Known for creating works that blur the lines between commercial products, architectural relics, and artistic productions, this show features a series of large-scale tapestries harkening back to antiquity and the Middle Ages. Each woven work depicts a fragment of a scene based on a historic tapestry, images of which Czebatul sourced in books and online. Whether showing a foot, a veil, the base of a column, or a vase, the tapestries hang from steel bars, with some tied to these supports by loose threads. Through this process, Czebatul’s new works talk about not only arts that can be lost to time but also Western hegemony beyond the art world.

‘Modern Congo: 1930-1960’
Magnin-A
Through December 23, 2023

Building on the exhibition ‘Beauté Congo’ which spanned nearly a century of Congolese art and was held at the Fondation Cartier in 2015, ‘Modern Congo’ features around 50 works created by Congolese artists between 1930 and 1960. Specifically, Magnin-A’s show focuses on paintings by Modernist artists (1927–1932) and the so-called ‘Hangar’ artists (1946–1954). European colonizers brought materials for Modernists like Tshyela Ntendu and Bela Sara to paint images of the wildlife around them as well as daily life and traditional patterns, while artists in the Hangar group foreshadowed the aesthetics of contemporary central African painting. Although much of their work had been ‘forgotten’ until 2015, it is given new life here, awash with splendid color.

Brian Ng is a writer, originally from Aotearoa-New Zealand, living in Paris.

Published on October 17, 2023.

Caption for full-bleed image: A Trillion Threads Still Weaving (Four Veils), 2023. Courtesy of the artist and sans titre.