From the October 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
Art Basel Paris has been in a process of reinvention. The fair began in 2022 with a hastily organised event as Paris+ par Art Basel and held its first two editions in the Grand Palais Éphémère, a temporary space used while the Grand Palais itself was being prepared to host the Olympics. Last year’s fair was the first to take place in the Grand Palais and this year’s will do so too, even though renovations are not fully complete. More change is on the way: the fair’s director since 2022, Clément Delépine, recently announced that he is leaving the role after this year’s edition. ‘It’s been a ride,’ he tells me when we speak in late August, but ‘this is as close as it gets for a normal edition for us.’
The fair is the smallest in Art Basel’s roster – a ‘jewel box’, Delépine calls it. Yet it is a significant undertaking, with more than 200 exhibitors from 41 countries displaying a range of modern and contemporary work. The exhibitors are grouped into three sections: Galeries, Emergence and Premise (which focuses on thematic displays) and among the galleries are 29 newcomers – ‘quite a statement’, Delépine says, given the ‘fierce’ competition for space. These include Lodovico Corsini from Brussels, showing works by the Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani and Cape Town-based Stevenson, which is bringing works produced in South Africa in the 1990s. New collaborations are in the pipeline too, a standout being a booth by Jeffrey Deitch and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, presenting work by the mid-century artist Bob Thompson.
Art Basel Paris has an ambitious remit: as Delépine says, a fair is ‘a transactional platform’ but also a tool of ‘soft power’ that can show off the strength of the French art market. It is important to Delépine that the fair has a ‘French flavour’ and that this message is heard ‘beyond the walls of the Grand Palais’ and not just by the clientele who are there to buy. The public programme is a major part of this: this year it includes a project organised with Miu Miu at the Palais d’Iéna, spearheaded by the artist Helen Marten. In the Grand Palais itself, the ‘Oh La La!’ project, first seen last year, allows a curator to stage a ‘creative rehang’ of works, forging a ‘narrative arc’ that runs through the fair as a whole; this year the guest curator is the prominent film-maker and fashion writer Loïc Prigent.
One of the things that really excites Delépine is when a gallery ‘commits to a solo presentation. I find it incredibly audacious.’ Among the highlights here are Commonwealth and Council, bringing a display by Gala Porras-Kim; and newcomer Crèvecœur, which is showing work by the Japanese painter Yu Nishimura. With the artist now represented jointly by Sadie Coles and David Zwirner, Delépine refers to Nishimura as one of those artists who will be ‘harder to get in future’. Art Basel Paris has its fair share of established artists and galleries, but it prides itself on nurturing talent too – as Delépine puts it, ‘the cool, rising galleries that you see exhibiting upstairs are the blue-chip, established galleries of tomorrow.’
Art Basel Paris takes place in the Grand Palais, Paris, from 24–26 October.
Gallery highlights
Walter Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui
Until 19 December
Piano Nobile, London
More than 80 works by Sickert are on display here, all from the collection of Herbert and Ann Lucas. These include oils and prints inspired by travels in Dieppe and Venice, and one of five oil versions of his famous vision of repose, Ennui (c. 1913–14), as well as three etchings of the same scene.
Stan Douglas: Birth of a Nation and The Enemy
of All Mankind
Until 1 November
Victoria Miro, London
This is the European premiere of Birth of a Nation, the Canadian artist’s latest film installation, which presents clips from D.W. Griffith’s notorious white supremacist film of the same name (1915) in a chopped up, distorted fashion. The film is presented alongside several photographs from Douglas’s recent series The Enemy of All Mankind, which comprises highly staged, theatrical images inspired by Polly (1777), the comic opera written by the 18th-century satirist John Gay.
Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts
20 October–22 November
Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris
Inspired by the abandoned cars and rusting gas station signs he saw on a trip to Houston in 1985, Rauschenberg embarked on what would be his last sculpture series, a witty group of assemblages fused from old car parts, stop signs and other scrap metal picked up both in the United States and, later, on a trip to Naples. The series was last seen together in public at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in 2010; the artist’s centenary is an apt moment to reunite them.
Chris Huen Sin-kan: The Path and The Fog, Part II
Until 10 November
Matt Carey-Williams, Porchester Place, London
The Hong Kong-born artist’s practice, inspired by the techniques of Chinese ink painting, involves meticulously layering marks of colour on large-scale sheets of paper to create works that appear at
once frenzied and composed. The second part of The Path and the Fog series, on show here, consists of nine works that draws on everyday life, from dog walks to family breakfasts.
Fairs in Focus
1-54
16–19 October
Somerset House, London
More than 50 exhibitors – mostly from the Global South – are returning to Somerset House for the 13th edition of the UK’s pre-eminent fair for modern and contemporary African art. Special projects this year include an event curated by Art Comes First, a global collective dedicated to the preservation of African craft through fashion and design.
Highlights International
Art Fair
16–19 October
Munich Residenz
The Munich Residenz is once again hosting Highlights, a fair that deals in art and artefacts from antiquity to the present. More than 50 exhibitors are participating this year, showing everything from a 19th-century Russian desk to works by 20th-century artists including Marc Chagall and Josef Albers.
From the October 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.