Le Best of/de Paris - May 2026
This selection is drawn from more than 30 exhibitions visited across Paris this month.
List below.
I would be lying if I said this month was like the others in matters of art. Like many colleagues, collectors, co-friends and co-appreciators of art, I have overindulged in exhibitions and events during our biannual pilgrimage to the Serenissima. Should you be interested in reading my thoughts on the Venice Biennale, they were published in Zéro Deux.
So, after seeing more than 50 shows over the course of 5 days — one of them being the Scrovegni Chapel painted by Giotto, no less, the proto-Renaissance precursor to our all-over/immersive exhibition — my return to Paris was marked by everything except the desire to go see more art.
Exhibition view, Dan Graham & Ettore Spalletti, Marian Goodman Gallery, 2026
Later in the month, however, I overcame the overdose and went to explore what was going on in the galleries. As if by an act of God, the three shows that struck a chord happened to take place within a radius of about 100 meters from each other. Marian Goodman organized a duo presentation of Dan Graham and Ettore Spalletti in a combination both predictable and successful. Graham’s transparent architecture was juxtaposed with Spalletti’s geometry, incorporating unexpected curves into expected angularity and vice versa.
Katja Schenker, Could Be You, Still (6228), 2025
Across the courtyard, Mitterrand is exhibiting Katja Schenker with a solo show called French Vermilion. The gestures are very simple: red pigment spread onto the canvas in a 1:1 scale between the artist’s body and the surface. The traces of her fingers ground the pieces in our own perceptive reality. Schenker’s works in this series impose themselves as obvious oppositions to Yves Klein’s nudes (perhaps obvious only to me), not only through the clear negative of red versus blue, but also through their genesis as intentional female gestures rather than a result of following the directions of a male artist.
Installation view, Cheyney Thompson, Decomposition. Emanuela Campoli. Photo : Pauline Assathiany. Courtesy of the artist and Emanuela Campoli Paris/Milan. 2026
Noa Eshkol. Exposition Noa Eshkol © Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme / Thibaut Chapotot
Finally, on the perpendicular rue de Braque, Emanuela Campoli exhibits Cheyney Thompson for the eighth time at the gallery. The post-Biennale talk of the town seems to be that systems are taking over artistic creation. Should that be true, Thompson has been indulging in this modus operandi for over 20 years. The paintings presented in the show were all conceived for the occasion, following the precise measurements of both the upstairs and downstairs spaces of the gallery, as well as correspondences between pigment quantity distributions and translations of complementary shades and light spaces from digitally produced images into good old paint. If you go to see it, arm yourself with the exhibition text — otherwise the works will read as riddles.
Exhibition view, Chechu Álava, The Hall of Mirrors, Xippas , 2026
I was looking forward to Noa Eshkol’s show at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, which left me with mixed feelings. Many of the quilts look better in photographs than in reality, no doubt because much of the fabric used has a variety of textures that isn’t so obvious in images. On the contrary, Chechu Álava at Xippas comes across with very delicate paintings of female characters inspired — or even borrowed — from classical paintings, charming the viewer through their blurry finish.
On this note — à bientôt in June with a denser version of this monthly letter.
—g
Seen this month:
Thaddaeus Ropac, Adrian Ghenie, ROMAN CAMPAGNA New Paintings and Drawings
Thaddaeus Ropac, Robert Mapplethorpe, Objects
Galerie Chantal Crousel, Lydia Ourahmane, 1752 Photos
David Zwirner, Mamma Anderson, Œuvres sur papier
Xippas, Chechu Álava, The Hall of Mirrors
Ruttkowsky;68, Ellen Antico, Sirens
Emanuela Campoli, Cheyney Thompson, Decomposition
Galerie Allen, Third Person
Art concept, Michel François
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme, Noah Rashkol, 1924-2007. Danse et compositions
Marian Goodman, Ettore Spalletti & Dan Graham
Mitterrand, Katja Shenker, French Vermillion
Sabine Bayasli, Karolina Orzelek
Galerie C, Robin Wen, Dancing on a volcano
Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Nancy Brooks Brody, As if it wasn’t there
Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Richard Nonas
Marcelle Alix, Signal, Marie Voignier
Spare Room, Clémentine Bruno & Matthias Odin
