Paris Art Week kicked off under unusual circumstances as collectors and art professionals descended on the French capital straight from London. Art Basel added an extra day to its VIP program with the Avant-Première ahead of its official Wednesday opening. Through a weekend of protests and civil upheaval, galleries across the city proceeded with their scheduled openings. Four prominent satellite art fairs—Paris Internationale, Asia NOW, OFFSCREEN, and Chris Sharp’s Post-Fair—all launched concurrently, drawing art market attention despite traces of recent turmoil remaining visible near venue entrances, including burned-out vehicles on nearby streets.
Celebrating its founding as an independent, gallery-led alternative to traditional fair models, Paris Internationale found a fitting home in a disused industrial building featuring an extensive underground parking garage near the Canal Saint-Martin neighborhood. Visitors entering the fair encountered an immersive exhibition titled “In the Bellies of the Rocks” by Saudi artist Ayman Zedani, presented by Arts AlUla and the AlUla Contemporary Art Museum in collaboration with AFALULA. Developed through years of research across northwestern Arabia, the installation used archaeological aesthetics, atmospheric videos, and sculptural fragments—culminating in a black eagle sculpture titled The Death of Dushara—to explore the intersection of human civilization, mythology, and environmental vulnerability.
Inside the main building, 56 galleries and five nonprofit spaces from 19 countries occupied three floors of unfinished walls and raw surfaces. Munich-based Deborah Schamoni presented works by Rebecca Ackroyd, Nicole Wermers, and Jesse Glazzard, while Italian gallery Vistamare anchored its booth with a large-scale installation of wooden tree sculptures by Claudia Comte, offered at €200,000 complete or individually between €28,000 and €36,000. The fair also introduced “Second Nature,” a curated section spotlighting seven emerging South Korean art spaces. The presentations featured collaborative wooden sculptures by BBK, priced from €4,000 to €7,500, alongside abstract paintings by Jisoo Lee and lenticular works by Dew Kim exploring religious symbolism through a queer lens.
On the upper floors, international galleries showcased diverse practices, including Tomio Koyama Gallery’s intergenerational dialogue featuring 91-year-old Japanese ceramicist Keiji Ito, whose works sold out early with ceramics around €8,000 and paintings at €9,500. Paris gallery Ciaccia Levi exhibited Caribbean-rooted installations by Kenny Dunkan addressing the legacy of French colonialism. Hong Kong’s Square Street Gallery presented IV Chan’s hallucinatory installation The Good, the Bed and the Snuggly, and Athens-based Callirrhoë exhibited Vasilis Papageorgiou’s bronze casts highlighting overtourism in the Cycladic landscape. Greek gallery The Breeder also drew attention with mystical drawings by Istanbul-born artist Eleni Pitari Pangalou, priced between €12,000 and €15,000.
Meanwhile, the 12th edition of Asia NOW opened at the Monnaie de Paris, bringing together some 60 galleries, institutions, and private foundations representing over 200 artists under the curatorial theme “Sentimental Value.” Beijing- and Paris-based HdM Gallery showed Qi Zhuo’s antique-hybrid glass sculptures priced around €16,000 alongside expressive abstracts by Fang Yirui. The fair’s courtyard hosted hand rolls by HANDO, while upstairs installations included Mor Charpentier presenting Indian artist Reena Kallat’s Pattern Recognition, a series of eye-chart-like pyramidal structures mapping Henley Passport Index rankings from 2006 to 2026 to expose global inequalities in freedom of movement.
Additional presentations at Asia NOW featured Katinka Huang and Kodai Ujiie with Lux Feminae, Isolina Minjeong’s Inca- and Korean-inspired ceramics via Galerie Lefevre & Fils, and a poetic environmental installation titled “You Are Here” by Filipino artist Pam Yan Santos, staged by Manila’s The Drawing Room using over 1,000 dated eggs and grass. Leila Heller Gallery presented Morteza Khosravi’s psychologically charged figurative paintings, and Chicago’s Tala gallery exhibited Jon Cuyson’s works addressing Filipino seafarers’ labor.
Chris Sharp’s Post-Fair expanded into two buildings on Rue du Temple at No. 74 and No. 79, hosting 34 international galleries with a focus on post-minimalist aesthetics and conceptual rigor. Reporting an opening day turnout of nearly 1,000 visitors, the dealer-led fair featured São Paulo participant Yehudi Hollander-Pappi presenting Renata Haar and Luca Milano, Tomio Koyama Gallery exhibiting whimsical works by Tomoko Nagai, and Shanghai’s Brownie Project showcasing Tan Mu’s Signal series, which translates complex data networks and submarine cables into intricate paintings and sculptures incorporating memory cards and thread.
