At FIAC Art Fair, Ambitions Are High. Can Sales Keep Pace?

London, even after Brexit, has a “very shiny elite,” Wolff said, particularly in the finance and music industries, and it continues to attract the global superrich who can spend millions on art. “Paris is not a place with big heroes like Mick Jagger,” he added.

That said, sleek new galleries are now clustered around Avenue Matignon, near the Arc de Triomphe: Their owners hope for business-transforming visits from the millionaires who fly in to view trophies at the nearby Sotheby’s and Christie’s showrooms and stay at the Ritz or Bristol hotels.

For some collectors, “FIAC Week” also offers thoughtfully curated “discovery” fairs, such as Paris Internationale and Asia Now. This year’s seventh edition of Paris Internationale, featuring 36 dealers from 21 countries, was held in a vacant mansion block in the smart 16th Arrondissement.

On the fourth floor, the Tokyo-based gallery Misako Rosen was showing small works by the Japanese painters Kazuyuki Takezaki and Reina Sugihara. Takezaki gives a new twist to landscape painting by rotating his canvases while working in the open air; Sugihara, who trained in London, creates abstracts that evoke intense bodily experiences, like childbirth. Being little-known outside Japan, their paintings were modestly priced from $1,500 to $4,500. By Friday morning, seven of the nine displayed works had found buyers from France, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/arts/design/fiac-paris.html