7 Emerging Artists to Watch at FIAC and Its Edgier Sister Fair, the Paris Internationale

For art lovers looking to make discoveries in Paris this week,
FIAC has a strong showing of emerging galleries in an upstairs wing
of the Grand Palais. But if you’re looking to swap out the VIP
lounge for a Vape lounge—literally, one of the project spaces is
also an e-cigarette store—the Paris Internationale is a suitable
alternative.

While FIAC’s Lafayette section
does offer generously subsidized booths (the Lafayette Group coughs
up half the cost), the selection remains tight, with room for just
10 galleries. For collectors hoping to make discoveries on the
lower end of the market, the younger fair offers a wider range to
choose from, with 42 galleries making a showing in
2019. The nonprofit
fair, which is free to visit, is now in its fifth edition, and is
spread across four
floors of a Hausmannian mansion a 20-minute walk away from the
Grand Palais. 

Here are 7 emerging artists to watch from both fairs.

Merike Estna at Temnikova &
Kasela

Who: Born in 1980,
the 39-year-old artist
interrogates the hierarchy between fine art and handicrafts in her
work, integrating painting into objects from everyday
life. In her early
days, Estna’s work was recognizable through its light blue, pink,
and yellow swirls, with a marbling technique applied on canvas as
well as on clothing and furnishings. Now, she uses a technique she
calls “masking,” peeling tape off her work to reveal buried layers,
creating a palimpsest-like effect. There is also a performative
element to her practice.

Based in: Tallinn,
Estonia

On View: Paris Internationale

Why You Should Pay Attention: Estna was included in the Estonian chapter of
the 13th Baltic Triennial, curated by Vincent Honoré, in 2018.
Previously, she was part of the XVI Vilnius Painting Triennial in
2016, and has had numerous solo exhibitions in London, New York,
Mexico City, Stuttgart, the Baltics, and across Scandinavia. She
has also had institutional solo shows at Riga’s Contemporary Art
Center and Tallinn’s KUMU Art Museum.

What to Look Out For: Temnikova & Kasela is showing works from Estna’s 2018 “Dawn
of the Swarm” series, first shown at Bosse & Baum gallery in
London, as well as a new hanging sculptural work. 

Prices: A large canvas is
priced at €8,100, with smaller ones at €2,700. There are also a
number of ceramic pots ranging from €500 to €1,000.

Up Next: Estna has an
upcoming solo at the Moderna Museet in Malmö (“Ghost of the future, filled
with memories of past“) from October 26, 2019, through January
26, 2020. Her gallery will also be bringing her to Frieze New York,
where she will stage a solo performance.

Issy Wood at
Carlos/Ishikawa

Who: Born in the US in
1993, the 26-year-old artist infuses contemporary content into
traditional painting styles. She has called herself a “medieval
millenial” after imposing contemporary anxieties onto
medieval-looking painting (one of her works depicts an iPhone). In
her practice, Wood is interested in the aesthetics of seduction and
the translation of femininity into physical objects,
imbuing appropriated
images with an unsettling anachronistic twist.

Based in: London,
UK

On View: Paris Internationale

Why You Should Pay Attention: There has been a rising
interest in Wood’s work on the London scene. Her work is in London’s Zabludowicz Collection,
and was featured in its “World
Receivers” exhibition
earlier this year. She also had a solo exhibition, “All the
rage,” this summer at
Goldsmiths CCA.

What to Look Out For: A
large, two-panel, oil-on-linen painting is on view at the fair. The
new work, titled Excuse
me / your life is waiting (2019), depicts a delicate porcelain dining set
in the foreground, and it takes you a second to notice a looming
disembodied female figure in the background. The juxtaposition in a
city such as Paris prompts a connection to the paintings of Renoir
and the Impressionists, in which the female body is often relegated
to the background.

Prices: Her smaller works
go for around $5,000, and the large painting in the booth is priced
at $35,000, although her works can sell for up to
$50,000.

Up Next: Wood is
currently on view in a group exhibition at the Schinkel
Pavillon in Frankfurt,
through December 15. She will also be on view at the booth of JTT
gallery at Art Basel Miami Beach, and will have a solo exhibition
at JTT in New York in January, followed by another solo at
Carlos/Ishikawa in London in the spring.

Nora Turato at Galerie Gregor
Staiger

Who: Turato is a Croatian
artist with a background in graphic design, music, and performance.
Born in 1991 in Zagreb, the 28-year-old appropriates texts from the
“contemporary infosphere” to collage together an eclectic mix of
social media posts, advertising slogans, tobacco warnings, and
extracts from poems, political speeches, TV shows, and newspapers.
Her practice is rooted in performance, with the texts forming the
basis of scripts for spoken-word performances, in which she uses
her body as a musical instrument, animating it with juddering
movements and primal, guttural snarls. 

Based in: Amsterdam,
Netherlands

On View: Paris Internationale

Why You Should Pay Attention: She just closed a show, “explained
away,” at the
Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein, and was included as a performer
at Manifesta
12.
She has also exhibited
at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva and at the 32nd Biennial
of Graphics Arts in Ljubljana.

What to Look Out For: Turato has given form to her scripts in a new
series of enamel works based on a recent performance at the gallery
in Zürich. The panelled works layer excerpts in stark
Helvetica combined with a font she has created from her own
handwriting.

Prices: The unique works
at the fair range from €15,000 for a single panel work to €25,000
for an ensemble of four panels.

Up Next: Turato is slated
to open a solo show at the Serralves Museum in Porto in October,
and has upcoming
performances at the ICA in London and Madrid’s CentroCentro in November, followed by exhibitions in 2020 at
the Philara Collection in Düsseldorf, MGLC in Ljubljana, and Centre
Pompidou in Paris.

Timothée Calame at Weiss
Falk

Who: Calame makes
Minimalist installations imbued
with a hint of Japanese manga, and his works are somehow indebted
to WH Auden (though the artist has no known association to
a certain
silver-screen heartthrob who bears a similar name).

Based in: Marseilles,
France

On View: FIAC

Why You Should Pay Attention: Calame received MAMCO Geneva’s 2017 Prix Manor,
which came with a solo exhibition at the institution, and he has
had various solo shows, including one at the Swiss Institute in New
York.

What to Look Out For: At
the booth of Basel gallery Weiss Falk, Calame installed a full
mini-show called “The City without Walls,” after a WH Auden poem.
The main sculpture is a series of dystopian-looking towers of
concrete, cut through with slices of yellow resin. Situated by the
window, it catches the light in delightful ways as the sun rises
and sets during the day. It’s one of the most talked-about booths
in the sector, and in the span of a few minutes a director at
Chantal Crousel and Reena Spaulings founder Emily Sundblad both stopped by to check it out.

Prices: €3,000 for small
wall works featuring suitcases that, in darkness, reveal monsters
inside, and €12,000 for the sculpture.

Up Next: Next summer, he
will be featured in the second edition of the Biennale Sculpture
Garden, taking place June 12 through September 10, 2020. The
outdoor biennale, curated by Balthazar Lovay in collaboration with
MAMCO Geneva, takes place across four vast public spaces in
Geneva.

Nicholas Cheveldave at
Emalin

Who: Cheveldave’s
collages deal with information taken primarily from commuter
newspapers, which rely on advertizing revenue to survive. He
interrogates the commodity of empty space, and his work often
adopts the floral and flamboyant language of luxury residential
developers, which sell a lifestyle and identity alongside their
product. Images of nests—and evocations of urban sprawl,
overcrowding, and gentrification—pervade the work.

Based in: London,
UK

On View: Paris Internationale

Why You Should Pay Attention: Cheveldave studied with the Turner
Prize-winner Mark Leckey, and has been with Emalin since he
graduated from Goldsmiths in London. His work is in the collections
of the Kistefos Museum and Sculpture Park in Norway and Beth Rudin
DeWoody’s collection.

What to Look Out For: A series of small collage works are on view at the
fair.

Prices: The prices for
his work generally fall under €10,000. The smaller collages at the
fair were priced at €1,600, although his larger works on canvas and
paintings on Dibond range from about €5,000 to €8,000.

Up Next: Cheveldave’s work will be exhibited at Emalin
as part of Condo London in January.

Gina Fischli at Soft
Opening

Who: Fischli is a master
of making sculpture that plays with ideas of scale. And her work,
which often poses as something sweet, tends to have an undercurrent
of menace.

Based in: London,
UK

On View: FIAC

Why You Should Pay Attention: Fischli is a graduate of the Urs Fischer
studio.

What to Look Out For: One
of the more eye-catching works at the fair is Fischli’s
The Roberta
(2019), a five-meter-wide faux fur purse that
fills the entire booth. Hanging from it are gigantic Parisienne
tourist-bait trinkets, done up in gold leaf.

Prices: Around €3,500
for a small castle sculpture, and €30,000 for the large
purse.

Up Next: The bag is going
to the new Fri Art
kunsthalle in Fribourg,
Switzerland, later this year, and next year Fischli will have her
first institutional solo show at 80 WSE in New York.

Paul Maheke at Sultana

Who: Born in 1985, Maheke
is best known as a dancer. His work engages with a queer, black,
and a spiritual quest for identity. He also makes videos and
installations, and, as you will discover at Paris Internationale,
his practice has also recently expanded into
object-making.

Based in: London,
UK

On View: Paris Internationale

Why You Should Pay Attention: Maheke has been steadily growing his profile
over the past few years. In 2017, he was commissioned by Catherine
Wood at Tate for its performance festival, and he is currently part
of the Venice Biennale’s performance program. He is also on view at
the Museum Ludwig in a group show called “Transcorporealities,” through January 2020, and a performance work
was recently acquired by the Walker Art Gallery in
Liverpool.

What to Look Out For: Two
sculptural works are on view at the fair: a small engraving of an
owl on glass (a symbol of the night that Maheke uses to throw into
question associations of the devil with blackness)
and a larger, luminous
painting made with Plexiglas, acrylic, Vaseline, and
lightbulbs.

Prices: The smaller work
at the fair was priced at €3,500, the larger luminous painting at
€8,000. More broadly, performance and video works can go for €5,000
to €7,000, and his installations, which incorporate video and
performance, can go for €25,000 to €35,000.

Up Next: He is part of
the Fondation Ricard’s 2019 prize
exhibition, which runs
through October 26. Maheke is also participating in Performa in New
York in November.

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Sister Fair, the Paris Internationale appeared first on artnet
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