Among the current exhibitions are Martha Wilson’s performance archive, a Claire Tabouret double-bill, and intertwined works by Tarek Atoui and Danh Vo

Amy Zion

Paris: seven exhibitions to see now

Paris galleries and institutions are&nbsp;hosting countless exhibitions, performances, and events around the city and beyond the Périphérique. With many shows postponed due to the pandemic, the anticipation and energy surrounding the current openings is palpable as international visitors return to take part in the cultural season. Art Basel has selected seven gallery exhibitions on view now and enlisted curator Amy Zion, a recent transplant to the city, to offer an overview of the exciting roster.&nbsp;

Martha Wilson,&nbsp;‘The Political and Performance Art Collection’ mfc-michèle didier Through January 8, 2022‘The Political and Performance Art Collection’&nbsp;is a presentation of work by Franklin Furnace founder and veteran New York artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/23512/Martha-Wilson">Martha Wilson</a> to coincide with her solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Focused on the work Wilson produced during her early years in Halifax, Canada, the show at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1608/mfc-michèle-didier">mfc-michèle didier</a> features videos of Wilson impersonating political figures including Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Tipper Gore. Wilson’s own works are complimented by pieces by artists who inspired her from the 1970s onwards, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7715/Vito-Acconci">Vito Acconci</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/21421/Howardena-Pindell">Howardena Pindell</a>, and Suzy Lake. The gallery has also published a book of Wilson’s selected journal entries made between the years 1965 and 1983 to mark the occasion of the artist’s major exhibitions in Paris.&nbsp;

Danh Vo Tarek Atoui,&nbsp;‘The Whisperers’ Galerie Chantal Crousel Through November 20Although they were billed as two distinct, coinciding solo presentations,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7089/Danh-Vo">Danh Vo</a> and Tarek Atoui installed their shows together, intertwining their works throughout the two main spaces of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1098/Galerie-Chantal-Crousel">Galerie Chantal Crousel</a>. In the entry, a black wire curls around bronze toes in an untitled sculpture by Vo, connecting the work with a new sound installation, The Whispers / Module 6, by Atoui. Large antique limestone baths in Atoui’s sculptures act like a material bridge between the work of the two artists, linking Atoui’s sculptural sound experiments to Vo’s arrangements of sliced antique marble installations. The show highlights the connection between the two artists practices, which are concerned, in different ways, with history’s resonances and reverberations.In addition, not to be missed is ‘Replica’ at Cahn Contemporary, an exhibition curated by Chantal Crousel featuring antiquities and works by gallery artists, or, in her words, ‘objects [that] are contemporary expressions of just a few thousand years apart’.

Louise Bonnet,&nbsp;‘Bathers’ Galerie Max Hetzler Through October 30Large, pink fleshy figures with tiny or nonexistent heads populate nondescript, beach-like landscapes in Louise Bonnet’s seven new paintings on view at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1133/Galerie-Max-Hetzler">Galerie Max Hetzler</a>’s Paris location. Titled&nbsp;‘Bathers’, this exhibition is the Los Angeles–based, Swiss artist’s first solo presentation in France. Inspiration from Old Master’s paintings to Surrealism is evident in the artist’s manipulation of imagined bodies, certain parts of which are emphasized through enlargement to highlight areas of shame and discomfort. With the exception of one work, the figures and body parts appear to maneuver or float to accommodate the edge of the painting, bending or turning to fit within the frame, creating the impression that the figures themselves are conforming to the limits of the pictorial plane.&nbsp;

Ashley Hans Scheirl,&nbsp;‘Tranny’s Pleasures: Pain_things in a Crazy World’ Loevenbruck Through December 4Austrian artist Ashley Hans Scheirl went by Angela and Hans Angela before most recently taking the name Ashley Hans. In the 1990s, they experimented at the heart of London’s queer lesbian scene, making home movies on chosen families rather than those assigned by biology. As their work and life evolved, they began to make multidisciplinary work and immersive installations that used form to illustrate a kind of transitional approach to materials. For ‘Tranny’s Pleasures: Pain_things in a Crazy World’ at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2425/Loevenbruck">Loevenbruck</a>, the artistis turning the gallery into an immersive installation of painted and drawn forms propped up like sculptures with metal legs. The works in total are meant to create a kind of dramaturgical stage for performance, first and foremost implicating the visitors’ bodies but also continuing the artist’s exploration into how to blur categories and subvert clichés

Mark Dion,&nbsp;‘Retour à l’école’ In Situ – fabienne leclerc Through November 27Extinct and threatened species including mammoths, wolves, and fish are presented in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8769/Mark-Dion">Mark Dion</a>’s The&nbsp;Extinction Cabinet (2021), a central work in his latest exhibition of installations and drawings, ‘Retour à l’école’ (or, ‘return to school’ in English) at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2012/In-Situ-fabienne-leclerc">In Situ – fabienne leclerc</a>. Dion’s interest in society’s ‘suicidal’ relationship to nature is a central concern in the exhibition, as he sees artists’ representations of nature as key to understanding our relationship therewith, which has, at this point, gone awry (to put it mildly). Dion continues his decades-long exploration of museum classification systems, offering a taxonomical display of a natural world that no longer exists and points to future classification of our world’s disappearing species.

Claire Tabouret,&nbsp;‘L’Urgence et la Patience’ Almine Rech Claire Tabouret,&nbsp;‘Paysages d’Intrérieurs’ Perrotin Through December 18To coincide with the debut of French, Los Angeles–based painter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/21899/Claire-Tabouret">Claire Tabouret</a>’s first bronze fountain, Baigneuse assise, inspired by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6746/Pablo-Picasso">Picasso</a>’s Three Women at the Fountain (1921) and presented at the Musée National Picasso Paris,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1254/Almine-Rech">Almine Rech</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1134/Perrotin">Perrotin</a> have mounted coordinated presentations of her paintings. ‘L’Urgence et la Patience’ at Almine Rech focuses on Tabouret’s group portraiture in rich, electric palettes, while’Paysages d’interieurs’ at Perrotin presents new landscapes in similar tones but painted on synthetic fur alongside monotypes of flower bouquets and ceramics. Seen together, all three presentations offer a substantial overview of the artist’s current work and concerns.

‘White Cube x FIAC’ White Cube Paris Office Through November 12Earlier this year,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1316/White-Cube">White Cube</a> opened a Paris Office in the eighth arrondissement, where they’re currently presenting a selection of works by a range of artists. In one room,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8471/Damien-Hirst">Damien Hirst</a>’s Fear (1994), from his series of medical cabinets, faces a sculpture by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8680/Cady-Noland">Cady Noland</a>, while three rooms over, there are two sculptures, a painting, and a body imprint work by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7509/David-Hammons">David Hammons</a>. One of Hammons’s works, an untitled fur coat from 2007, is accompanied online by an audio guide by curator Mark Godfrey, who discusses how the mink covered in purple paint figures into the artist’s interest in ‘confronting economic systems that the white world built up, and to disrupt these systems to his own benefit’.Amy&nbsp;Zion is a curator and writer living in Paris. She has curated exhibitions at the Queens Museum in New York, the Hessel Museum at Bard College, and&nbsp;the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, among other venues. From 2016–21, she was a faculty member at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.Top image: Louise Bonnet, Pisser (detail), 2021. Photo by Charles White&nbsp;/&nbsp;jwpictures.com.&nbsp;Courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Paris, and London. &copy; Louise Bonnet.

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Among the current exhibitions are Martha Wilson’s performance archive, a Claire Tabouret double-bill, and intertwined works by Tarek Atoui and Danh Vo

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