Nico Kos Earle spoke to three art professionals about what they saw, what they loved and what they wanted to buy in Paris, during Art Basel Week.
Part 1
Lucy Meakin is a UK-based private art advisor, and here is what she is walking away with from Art Basel Paris:
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Rirkrit Tiravanija is a Thai contemporary artist whose art promotes social commentary and asks us to question our way of life. ‘A Million Rabbit Holes is a stencilled work which alludes to the way that social media algorithms lead us astray and into a descent away from human connection. The slickly produced artwork with attractive gold mirrored surface is alluring and engaging, and reflects the viewer back on oneself, whilst asking us a question that we would all rather ignore.
DJABRIL BOUKHENAÏSSI
Djabril Boukhenaïssi’s work spans painting, pastel and engraving, exploring themes of transience, memory, and the vanishing of the night under light pollution. His imagery often features violet hues and liminal architectural fragments, creating dreamlike atmospheres suspended between fiction and recollection.
JOANNE BOYER
French artist Joanne Boyer explores the idea of bodies in transitional states, often using half-light or semi-dusk as an atmospheric backdrop to figures that are caught in states of becoming or partial reveal. The artist recently transitioned from Jean-Baptiste to living as Joanne, so her art is somewhat of an aesthetic expression of this personal journey, whilst remaining an elusive narrative with references to historical forms of painting.
PART 2
Then we spoke to Katie Heller – founder of Heller Arts
Bourse de Commerce
Heller visited the Bourse de Commerce. ‘”Minimal” was a wonderful palette cleanser after two art fairs back-to-back. Art Basel felt same-same after Frieze but in a more inspiring setting, and Paris International felt like it was lacking somehow.’
Until the 19th of January, “Minimal” presents over a hundred historic works that trace the diversity of Minimalist art since the 1960s. Combining works from the Pinault Collection with loans from prestigious collections, this exhibition is “Minimal” in subject, but not in scope. Exploring the global evolution of a movement characterised by pared-down aesthetics and a disruption of display conventions, curator Jessica Morgan (Director of Dia Art Foundation) highlights the distinct methodology of Asian, European, North and South American artists, who shared a common drive to expand the relationship between artwork and audience. “For instance,” says Morgan, “in Japan, the Mono-ha movement focused on bringing ‘things’ together in their natural, unaltered states, highlighting the interdependence of objects, space, and viewer.”
Heller says, “I loved the Lydia Pape installation – so dramatic, almost like a set design, cleverly lit so that the threads seemed to vibrate. Agnes Martin – masterful, minute repetitive brush strokes, covering an entire canvas and each stroke somehow identical in size and form. (She must have had OCD to accomplish this.) One is left in awe of the levels of concentration, focus and determination this must have taken. The Lee Ufan, whose work includes these perfectly controlled brushstrokes, where the blank canvas is as significant as the brushstrokes themselves. What is there as significant as what is there? They reminded me of calligraphy created by the zen Buddhist monks for whom calligraphy can be the path to a meditative state, Zen Buddhism, for instance, the practice of hitsuzendō (筆禅道, “the way of the brush and Zen”) involves striving for a state of “no-mind” (mushin), where thoughts and emotions don’t interfere with the spontaneous flow of the brush.”
Gerhard Richter at the Foundation Louis Vuitton
For Heller, this season’s standout exhibition has to be Gerhard Richter at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Visit Here) “an incredible retrospective presented in chronological order, taking you on a journey from his photorealism paintings – as a result of his mother giving him a camera at 13 – and then to abstraction and back again. He masters both abstract and hyper realism, and then has a break and decides to draw, and then experiments with glass.”
Richter, widely regarded as one of the most important and internationally celebrated artists of his generation, was born in Dresden in 1932. He fled East Germany for Düsseldorf in 1961, before settling in Cologne, where he currently lives and works. “This exhibition gives us insight into his personal life: his relationships with his daughter, his wife, the end of his marriage, his second wife and child. In the final room, we find three paintings made in response to photographs from Auschwitz (taken at great risk by someone), which are also included. Moving and harrowing, we see the artist coming to terms with his German heritage, laying himself bare as it were. After all his monumental achievements as an artist, he reveals his humility and shame.” On until the 2nd of March, 2026, this follows from landmark monographic shows including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell and Mark Rothko. More on this soon…
Sebastián Espejo
Finally, her one to watch is Sebastián Espejo. “I saw this artist @sebaespejov a few months ago and fell hard for his soft, layered colours loosely depicting interior scenes – like windows into the unconscious. Definitely, buying now.”
PART 3
Postscript from our stealth reporter, who, for reasons that may or may not have to do with cats on a lift, wishes to remain anonymous:
Here’s a few things I saw and liked in Paris, in addition to the Felix Gonzalez Torres candy: Melvin Edwards, ‘Echo, Reverb, Delay’ at the Palais de Tokyo; Arash Nassiri, Ginny on Frederick, Emergence Art Basel; Sula Bermudez-Silverman Hoffman Donahue, Emergence Art Basel; and Berlinde de Bruyckere, Galerie Contiua, Le Marais, Paris.
Nico Kos Earle