‘Seeing the work of artists that I represent in a museum gives me twice as much pleasure as selling a piece,’ says its eponymous founder

Florence Derieux

From a pizzeria to Paris+ par Art Basel: the exceptional trajectory of Edouard Montassut gallery

Édouard Montassut&nbsp;is in no hurry. Yet, it still took him only 7 years to become established as one of the most popular galleries in Paris. His singular exhibition program quickly drew both French and foreign visitors, even before the list of artists that he had decided to represent was published. <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/20254/Edouard-Montassut?lang=fr">Montassut</a>’s gallery showcases bold conceptual artistic practices from emerging international artists. Recently, he has exhibited Mitchell Kehe’s gestural paintings, Phung-Tien Phan’s readymade sculptures, Kinke Kooi’s proto-rococo drawings, and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/21996/Maggie-Lee">Maggie Lee</a>’s ever-changing reflections on American culture.
‘After studying law and training in curating at La Sorbonne, I worked at Bordeaux’s CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, before coming back to Paris where I joined the team of the art journal May.’ It was through his friendship with Eva Svennung, one of the two founders of the bilingual quarterly magazine, that he started to toy with the idea of his first gallery. It opened its doors in 2015. ‘It was a very unusual space, an old kosher pizzeria in a rundown shopping alley in Paris’s 2nd arrondissement. Eva and I took turns to put on exhibitions in the space, which was literally just a shop window, before taking over the space opposite and therefore having more flexibility.’

This unlikely venue gave artists a particular format in which to work. ‘It actually gave them more room to maneuver, and took away some of the pressure that they would normally feel doing their first show in Paris.’ Right from the beginning, Montassut wanted to highlight an art scene that had not yet been exhibited in France. ‘In 2016, we presented the first ever exhibition of <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/22053/Nicolas-Ceccaldi">Nicolas Ceccaldi </a>and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/19595/Mathieu-Malouf">Mathieu Malouf</a>, two North American artists who had studied in Germany. Both of them have highly critical and formal positions when it comes to painting. Pulp Fiction was the starting point for their exhibition, which played on the image of Paris shown in cinema. It was a show that had a big impact on a lot of people, and which was very important for me.’
The gallerist also considers ‘Citadelle’ by Marie Angeletti to be one of the most memorable shows he has put on in the space. It brought together disparate elements (sculpture, video, painting, photography, and a piece of writing that evoked Jeanne Duval – Charles Baudelaire’s muse and lover – and which doubled as a press release) in a haunting and ambiguous display. After 3 years of running the program, Montassut joined forces with Patrick Jullien, whom he had met while studying, and in 2019 inaugurated a larger and more traditional gallery space in the 9th arrondissement, between the Pigalle neighborhood and the iconic concert hall the Grand Rex.

Reflection, experimentation, and patience are at the heart of Montassut’s approach. He only revealed the list of artists that he represents – ‘a group of 14 artists, of which three are French but don’t live or work in France’ – in 2023. What do they have in common? ‘They’ve all got quite subtle and different positions on artistic creation; the art that they create is never quite what it seems to be. Maybe that’s what sums them up the best, even if their critical and personal approach doesn’t lead them to create a formally poor art.’
Apart from two exceptions, all the artists that Montassut represents were born in the 1980s and 1990s. More than half of them are already known on the international scene and have been exhibited in some of the world’s most respected art museums for forward-thinking, experimental programming. ‘This year, Marie Angeletti had a solo exhibition at Cologne’s Kunstverein, Hélène Fauquet showed at the Kunsthaus Glarus, Niklas Taleb at London’s Cell Project Space, Phung-Tien Phan at Basel’s Kunsthalle, and Özgür Kar at The Renaissance Society in Chicago, the Fridericianum in Kassel, and the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth.’

Seeing works by the gallery’s artists acquired by public collections – like Paris's Musée d'Art Moderne (Maggie Lee) or Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum (Özgür Kar), is for Montassut the ultimate reward. ‘I created the market for almost all of the artists I work with, and it is usually reflected by their institutional presence. That’s what I think is a healthy progression. For me, seeing the work of artists that I represent in museums gives me twice as much joy as selling a work. That’s what makes their work really exist and be known to the general public, and it means it will still be seen in several decades. It’s also means that other galleries are going to be interested in them and show their work to new audiences and other collectors. As soon as an artwork becomes part of a public collection, it belongs to and is open to everyone.’
This year, Montassut will take part in the main sector of Paris+ par Art Basel, which will allow him to show the breadth of his exhibition program. In 2022, he showed a series of never-before-seen photographs by Niklas Taleb in the Galeries Émergentes sector of the fair. How can the fair facilitate his gallery’s work in the long term? ‘I’m convinced that the programs put in place by the fair will help to restore Paris as the capital of the art world, by making young artists and their gallerists more visible, encouraging more forward-thinking programming in both private and public institutions, and by breathing new life into Paris’s artistic and cultural scene.’ Following the example of Ivan Cheng, who was asked by Lafayette Anticipations to present an original performance as part of its ‘Festival d’Automne’, the artists represented by&nbsp;Édouard Montassut are picking up the pace, giving us many opportunities to shake up our understanding of art – and life.

<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/20254/Edouard-Montassut">Edouard Montassut</a> will be part of the main sector of Paris+ par Art Basel.
Florence Derieux is an art historian and curator.
Published on August 23, 2023.
Caption for full-bleed images, from top to bottom:&nbsp;1.&nbsp;Phung-Tien Phan,&nbsp;Beyoncé-Birthday, 2022. Courtesy of Edouard Montassut. 2.&nbsp;Installation view of Marie Angeletti,&nbsp;‘Citadelle’ at Edouard Montassut, Paris, 2016. Courtesy of Edouard Montassut. 3.&nbsp;Marc Kokopeli, Meeting people is easy,&nbsp;2022. Courtesy of Edouard Montassut.

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