Salvatore Emblema

Paris is on full view

At a time when Paris is on full view to the world following the Olympic Games and ahead of Art Basel Paris, which is taking place for the first time at the Grand Palais, French gallerists are redoubling their ambitions (See here the report: the augmented reality of Paris’s contemporary art scene). But like everyone on the planet right now, their objective is reassurance.

Times of uncertainty

Xavier Veilhan

For in times of uncertainty, like the conditions we’re living through today, human beings love to turn to the past. They go in search of lessons from history. They look for parallels with the current situation. The art market is no exception to this rule. Seeing the work of painters who have been unjustly forgotten, who are now old or dead, is clearly, on a moral level, a way of rectifying this injustice. Also temporal distance offers us not just the chance for a panoramic view of their artistic output but also a way of situating their relevance in light of their era.

José Gamarra

The Renos Xippas gallery in the Marais is showcasing the absolutely remarkable work of an artist who is 90 years old, José Gamarra. He was born in Montevideo in 1934 and has lived in Paris since 1963. We can admire his paintings from the 1960s to the present day in Paris until 12 October. They all share one thing in common: they are depictions of forests.

Green and wild canvases

They are inspired by the Brazilian Amazon, where he stayed when he was young. For the painter these are symbols of our society. Since the 1970s Gamarra has been talking about environmental dangers and arbitrary power grabs. This is why these green and wild canvases feature disparate and anachronistic elements: a helicopter and a dark knight, chimneys from a factory, a Christ the Redeemer and little baroque villages, indigenous figures in traditional dress not far from a plane dropping its cargo… The influential Antillean thinker Edouard Glissant (1928-2011) (See here the report about Glissant) was one of his friends and admirers.

Edouard Glissant

In 1985 he wrote: “We must return to the forest (…) For those who want to rediscover the original myths you must go through its initiation.” Around the 1980s Gamarra exhibited primarily in the setting of the Albert Loeb gallery which closed in 2015. This is the first time he has been displayed by Xippas in Paris. His work features in permanent collections as prestigious as the Metropolitan Museum in New York. But his Parisian gallerist, wisely, has decided to set his works at relatively low prices. The paintings are on sale for between  25,000  euros for the exceptional finely crafted small format works and 90,000 euros  for the large-scale compositions.

Lucas Arruda

José Gamarra

The record at auction for Gamarra, which dates from 1999, goes up to 40,000 euros. His very minute forests somewhat recall one of the stars of the current market, the young Lucas Arruda (born in 1983) who is represented, among others, by the multinational Zwirner gallery. In 2021 one of his mini paintings that inspires contemplation sold for 428,000 euros.

Salvatore Emblema

We often overlook it because it’s situated on the upper floor, but the powerful British White Cube gallery has premises in Paris, at 10 Avenue Matignon, which opened in 2020. Until 5 October it is presenting, for the first time, the subtle work of Salvatore Emblema (1929-2006) from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Dubuffet and Rothko

Salvatore Emblema

The Neapolitan artist has always gone it alone, inspired first by the work of Dubuffet in Paris then by that of the abstract expressionists like Rothko, who he met thanks to a grant that enabled him to live in New York between 1956 and 1959. When he returned, he lived in Rome.

Monochrome haloes

The most stunning piece in his oeuvre is one of his jute canvases that he has unravelled (he pulls out threads from the denseness of the material to trace forms). In certain cases he has added great painted masses of colours, monochrome haloes that are not unreminiscent of the abstract work of Rothko. The subtle compositions, always geometric, also play with shadows and framings. Here the extreme economy of means can evoke the Italian Arte Povera movement.

Emanuele Emblema

“Emblema was a free and rebellious spirit,” highlights his grandson Emanuele Emblema, who runs the museum dedicated to the artist in Naples. For him, too, remarkable institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago posses some of his works. At auction the record price for Emblema, 112,000 euros, dates from 2015. White Cube is presenting his canvases in Paris for between 25,000 and 95,000 euros. A relatively low price for a gallery that represents other artists valued at millions of euros, such as Anselm Kiefer and Tracey Emin.

Miriam Cahn

One of the most popular exhibitions right now in France is not located at the heart of the capital but on the outskirts, in Romainville. There, the Swiss painter Miriam Cahn (born in 1949) is exhibiting, as she has done regularly for the past 17 years, at the Wolff gallery. 49 of her new works are  unveiled there  until 26 October.

Palais de Tokyo

Miriam Cahn

In 2023 Cahn was the subject of a very noteworthy retrospective at the Palais de Tokyo. On this occasion one of her paintings, named “Fuck abstraction!”, caused controversy and was vandalized by a visitor. From her mountain in the Grisons – she lives in the same area as the sculptor Alberto Giacometti did in his youth – she listens to the world through the media and her paintings often reverberate with violence and international conflicts.

Rape as a weapon of war

Miriam Cahn

“The exhibition at Palais de Tokyo changed her reception in France,” explains Jocelyn Wolff. In Romainville that time the subject is rape, used as a weapon of war. In a text associated with the exhibition she addresses the topic of the art world from 7 October 2023, “which reacted with letters of solidarity for Palestine against Israel.”

Performative practice

Miriam Cahn

Her painting technique is as rapid as the arrival of the news that inspires her. “She has a performative practice. Her paintings are made in a few hours,” explains her gallerist. We often see female figures, created with gestural flourishes in rudimentary forms. Miriam Cahn also possesses a certain mastery of colours.

Accessible rate set by the artist

Nude women who show suffering or express fright resemble self-portraits. According to her gallerist, if we take the example of the paintings that sell today for 80,000 euros, their value was less than half that ten years ago. Her record at auction, set in 2023, goes up to 660,000 euros. In the exhibition you can find original works from 4000 euros – this is the accessible base rate specially set by the artist – ranging up to 850,000 euros for a polyptych of six large paintings.

Xavier Veilhan

Lastly you mustn’t miss the show at the Sèvres gallery in the Place du Palais Royal, until 5 October, displaying the latest work of famous French sculptor Xavier Veilhan (born in 1963). In the past, this artist who exhibits a lot in Asia and represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2017, has made an impression with his monochrome sculptures installed in public spaces which take the archetypes of computer images, defined by a multitude of angular contours.

Superflou

This time he has created a new series baptized “Superflou” in white unglazed porcelain (more specifically bisque, or double fired) and in stoneware. These are figures that seem to be strangely blurred. He has conceived a table centrepiece in collaboration with the Sèvres porcelain manufacturer that resembles a model for a monument, composed of white creatures with indistinct forms.

Visual illusion

Single pieces are on sale for around 30,000 euros. The sinuous stoneware sculptures, also portraits, are particularly accomplished in terms of visual illusion. (On sale for around 60,000 euros). “There is a very long work of polishing the pieces to give this finish,” explains the artist. “This question of blurriness interests me a great deal. I myself have the impression of having very blurred knowledge,” he concludes jokingly.

Daft Punk

In recent years Xavier Veilhan was particularly busy with his collaborations with the music world. Incidentally his record at auction was set in June 2024 for a sculpture depicting the two famous members of French electronic music duo Daft Punk, which sold for 68,000 euros.

Xavier Veilhan

www.xippas.com/

https://www.whitecube.com/

www.galeriewolff.com/

www.sevresciteceramique.fr/galerieshowroom/galerie-de-sevres-a-paris.html