VINGT Paris News

Atelier 7 and Gerald Roberts Exhibition

Atelier 7  is housed in a 1904 atelier built by Süe and Mare, where Picasso created his first cut-paper collages in 1912. Louise Brody and her husband have turned their home into a showcase for their personal selection of artists and photographers whom the couple are passionate enough about to enjoy living entirely surrounded by their work.

The next exhibition features Gerald Roberts, a distinctive silhouette, whose lively imagination and delicious sense of humour are known from Adelaide to Paris, via London and Madrid. To say that he is a dandy and a dilettante would do justice to his unerring elegance and charm in all circumstances, and his obstinate refusal to take himself seriously, but not to his talent or the quality of his painting. It is by choice that he has remained so discreet an artist. His first monographic exhibition at Atelier 7 will consist of more than 20 large acrylics on canvas including a triptych “puzzle painting”, a number of smaller pieces and a selection of watercolours.

Bonjour Monsieur Boltanski… at Galerie du Jour

Text: Rooksana Hossenally

A meeting of twelve minds in one location, the exhibition Bonjour Monsieur Boltanski... imagined by the Galerie du Jour - agnès b, is a dialogue between Christian Boltanski and eleven artists who come together to pay homage to the art world’s biggest name this year.

Christian Boltanski has always been a prominent artist on the French Contemporary Art scene and enjoyed particular success this year already with his ground-breaking oeuvre, Personnes at the 2024 edition of Monumenta at the Grand Palais. The artist has also sold his soul to the devil as part of his endeavor to out-do death. Now the he turns his attention to agnès b.’s galerie, where eleven internationally-acclaimed artists come together in celebration of the famed artist who is to represent France at the upcoming Venice Biennale. Each piece created by the artists is meant to act like a postcard to the artist, “Hello Mr Boltanski…”

Bauhaus University Master of Fine Arts Program

The Faculty of Art and Design at the Bauhaus-University Weimar launched an international Master of Fine Arts course of study - "Public Art and New Artistic Strategies" in 2024. This unique program allows students to focus on art projects that go beyond the protective space of the museum and gallery. The point of departure are the different strategies and interventions of artists working in public space today. The definition of public space includes urban configurations, parks and gardens, landscapes and new media, as well as works that are communicated through radio, television or the internet.

VINGT EVENT The Arts Arena Presents Daniel Buren 5 PLACES LEFT!

The Arts Arena presents a French conceptual artist Daniel Buren, creator of the Palais Royal’s "Buren’s Columns" and advocate for the maintenance of public art works. Daniel Buren was born in 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine. In 1986 he created a 3,000 m² sculpture in the great courtyard of the Palais Royal, in Paris: "Les Deux Plateaux", more commonly referred to as the "Colonnes de Buren. This provoked an intense debate over the integration of contemporary art and historic buildings. Sometimes classified as an abstract minimalist he is known best for using regular, contrasting maxi stripes to integrate the visual surface and architectural space, notably historical, landmark architecture.

This event will take place on Tuesday, February 23, at 7pm and will be followed by a cocktail reception.

For reservations email news(@)vingtparis.com.

Reservations are limited to 25 and we hold reserved seats until 7:05pm then allow other people to sit in them. Anyone who is late can come in, but won't have a blocked seat after 7:05pm

February 23, 2024 at 7pm
Grand Salon
31 avenue Bosquet
75007 Paris

Vanités at Musée Maillol and Red Rivers by Starling

Text: Kay Roberts
Image: Simon Starling

The choice of subject matter for an artist, does it start with an object or start with an idea?  Image v. concept, both valid. These two shows are in many ways the opposite ends of the spectrum. Vanités at Musée Maillol is a group show, the image of the skull is the only connection between artists from the 16th century to the present day. A pick and mix - from Caravagio, de la Tour, Goya, Cezanne; past masters of the skill of painting to modern contemporary figures including Baselitz, Clemente, Haring,  Warhol, Messager, Pierre and Gilles, the Chapman Brothers and Hirst et al. Over three floors of the museum, a cornucopia of art styles through the ages - the ghost is Damien Hirst’s “Diamond Skull” - shown in London in a darkened room to ten people at a time, limited to a 5 minute slot, then sold for a small fortune: here a print version “For the Love of God, Laugh” is on show but not the sculpture.

Berlin - Paris 2024

Text: Brendan Seibel

This year's edition of Berlin-Paris kicked off throughout the city Friday night. Building on the successes of last winter's inauguration fourteen German galleries are being represented by their French counterparts, mirroring the previous week's activities in Berlin. Gallery concentrations in particular neighborhoods encourage visits as complimentary to strolls. Five venues stretch across the high-rent district between Musée d'Orsay and Place Saint-Michel; three cluster on the narrow side streets surrounding Centre Pompidou; three run the length from Filles du Calvaire to Chemin Vert; three sit atop Belleville's peak; one solo exhibition lies within reach of Bibliothéque François Mitterrand.

"Personnes" and "Après" by Christian Boltanski

Text and image: Kay Roberts

Today, 27th January, is the Holocaust Memorial Day and Christian Boltanski's work often draws on the memories of the disappeared. At the Grand Palais we are faced by both the physical and immaterial memories of Personnes - human beings: anybody or nobody. Entering the vast space of the Grand Palais a wall of rusty metal boxes piled high, 4 meters high, 20 meters long, it blocks the way. Each box labeled. Reminding me of the sad walls in cemeteries where the ashes or bones of the dead are placed, but these boxes are not labeled with a name, they belong to the anonymous many. Boltanski has chosen the coldest time of the year for Personnes, no heating, cold daylight in the winter chill.

The floor of the nave of the Grand Palais is laid out carefully with a field of clothes: An ordered, rectangular landscape of coats, knickers, skirts, shirts; a fabric garden. Beds of velvets, silks, cottons, wools, synthetics: a patch work of every colour and texture. A graveyard of clothes. Our clothes, our second skin. Walking the paths between to contemplate each article, each area lit by a strip light, the boom of the noise within the Grand Palais becomes more discernible, each area has a loudspeaker with one heartbeat, the boom was the cacophony of heartbeats. Boltanski has recorded and is recording an archive of heartbeats. These are to be housed on an island off Japan, Teshima, so that if you take the opportunity to record your heartbeat then at some time in the future it will be heard, a trace of you.

Michel Quarez Poster Art

Text and image: Joel Ma

There are two reasons to visit the Michel Quarez Poster Art retrospective other than the impressive works on display. 1) The gallery is inside the magnificent Bibliotheque Forney, a medevial castle which houses an extensive art library, garden and dramatic courtyard. 2) The location close to the Seine in the perpetually interesting Marais district.

When viewing the work of Michel Quarez, one is struck by his prescient connection to today’s modern electro fashion - black jackets and jeans offset by fluo high-top sneakers of Paris teens or the techno affection for colour, see artists such as M.I.A or Lady Gaga. His style is reminiscent of Basquiat or Herring as well as early New York grafitti but still maintaining a distinctly French identity.

Slott - Preliminaries: design at the threshold of love

Text: Kay Roberts
Photo: "Belly Love," Florence Jaffrain

Walk along the side of Gare de l'Est, up towards Gare du Nord, west of the Canal St Martin, catch sight of a shop window with a seductive throbbing light illuminating a white sculpture, or is it a sofa, or is it a bed?  Enter through the courtyard to the internal atelier space of Slott to find, on the ground floor, two objects, one a gold metal form in the shape of a fire, the other a large arbour made of fronds. Objects in that curious hinterland between art and design, art as design or design as art. But as all art forms rapidly morph into each other that is probably an obsolete distinction.

Cultural Centers in Paris

Text: Anna Bromwich
Photo: L'institut Culturel Suédois de Paris

Alongside London, Paris is one of the most multi-cultural cities in Europe.  Unlike London, it is not often viewed as such by the outside world which prefers to focus on the food, the wine and the language of love. As the Paris postcard circles the globe the French city on the ground is a cultural and linguistic mosaic. testament to this are the scattered regional cultural centres representing countries across the globe. The centres promote an artistic and cultural exchange between their respective countries and France. They also often collaborate between each other on events such as the recent ‘Jazzycolors’, a jazz festival featuring a global array of musicians and are represented as a group by the umbrella organisation Ficep. For those who have got their French down and want to add another tongue to the mix the majority of these centres provide language programs. Equally, if you’re far from home the chance to read a newspaper or browse a library in your own language provides quick relief to a bout of homesickness.