Elsa Werth, Charlotte Houette, Tarek Lakhrissi, Patricio Lima Quintana, Linus Bill + Adrien Horni
‘Portals’
Galerie Allen, Paris 3rd arrondissement
Until January 14, 2023

This winter, Galerie Allen invites its artists to reflect on doorways and other apertures. In ‘Portals’, Swiss duo Linus Bill + Adrien Horni open their colored-paper windows; Charlotte Houette experiments with a variety of media to create mysterious doors on canvas; Tarek Lakhrissi takes us through the looking glass; Patricio Lima Quintana seeks contact with the afterlife through his sculptures and paintings; and Elsa Werth short-circuits time with her installations. Each artist presents his or her own portal, creating a vertiginous, collective experience, where personal vision, once again, asks universal questions.

Ymane Chabi-Gara
‘Un petit morceau d’étoffe violette’
kamel mennour, Paris 6th arrondissement
Until January 28, 2023

During a study trip in Japan, French painter Ymane Chabi-Gara became fascinated by the phenomena of hikikomori – young adults staying locked in their homes for months or years. She started a project, inspired by the saturated interiors of this isolated youth, which she depicts in landscapes presented in ‘Un petit morceau d’étoffe violette’, her first exhibition with kamel mennour. In these luminous artworks, humans are erased by accumulated objects, dear to Chabi-Gara and typical of hikikomori. With soft and peaceful colors, the painter gives life to stillness, and creates a series in which isolation contrasts with abundance. 

Ai Weiwei, Leilah Babirye, Simone Fattal, Adam Pendleton
‘Distant Voices’
Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris 4th arrondissement
January 14 – February 25, 2023

In ‘Distant Voices’, Galerie Max Hetzler brings together four artists united by a commitment to protest. Ai Weiwei, Leilah Babirye, Simone Fattal, and Adam Pendleton condemn authoritarianism, questioning the way political events shape people’s existences. The artists draw on their own traditions and stories to create works and take a stand against oppression: Ai denounces the traumas of war through traditional Chinese porcelain; Babyrie tells the reality of being gay in Uganda through her hybrid sculptures; Fattal studies expatriate status in her memory-bearing ceramics; and Pendleton focuses his work on civil rights movements while referencing the aesthetics of protest.

Willa Wasserman
‘TS CLEF’
High Art, Paris 9th arrondissement
Until February 11, 2023

In Willa Wasserman’s paintings, you will find bodies. At High Art, the American artist presents her sensorial and oneiric vision, brought to life through oil paintings. Between shadow and light, she tells of transformations and relationships that evolve with time, in artworks inhabited by mysterious characters. Combined with silverpoint, which allows colors to change with oxidation, her brushstrokes invite us to relax in her world, populated with bodies curled up in a mist of color and sensuality.

M/M (Paris)
‘En toutes lettres’
Air de Paris, Romainville
January 15 – February 25, 2023

The artist and design duo M/M (Paris), founded in 1992 by Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak, continues to investigate typography through a series of anthropomorphic alphabets. Standing on an original piece of furniture in the center of the exhibition, is the book Letters from M/M (Paris), published in 2022, which presents all the letters that have appeared since this project began in 1992. Around it, 26 canvas-mounted posters on stands display artistic projects or cultural objects, in the standardized format of urban advertising. A creative strategy emerges that opens up a dialogue between the conscious and the unconscious, where letters become the ‘smallest containers of ideologies.’

Tarek Atoui
‘Waters’ Witness’
Mudam, Luxembourg
Until March 5, 2023

For his exhibition at Mudam in Luxembourg, Tarek Atoui takes over the Grand Hall and the Park Dräi Eechelen, with a large installation that calls on spectators to tame the space by means of sounds and objects. Through this project, the artist, who has always been interested in the intersection of visual and sound arts, evokes the cultural and commercial heritage of some coastal cities, such as Athens, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Beirut, and Porto, Portugal. Acting like an anthropologist, the artist proposes a sensorial journey, mirroring the fascinating complexity of our world.

Paris+ par Art Basel editorial team (Patrick Steffen, Karim Crippa, Juliette Amoros)

Caption for full-bleed image: Tarek Atoui during ‘Waters’ Witness’ recording session, 2017. Photograph by Alexandre Guirkinger.