Give the Grand Palais one booth, then a balcony.
From 23 to 25 October the Grand Palais holds the fifth Art Basel Paris, and the first with Karim Crippa as director. Two hundred and eleven galleries are under that glass. Twelve pairs are sharing a booth, a record for the fair. Pick a door, or the afternoon goes to the aisles. If you came for work made in Asia, the door is O.A2. Tina Kim Gallery, with rooms in Seoul and New York, shares it with Take Ninagawa in Tokyo. Last year Tina Kim was in Premise. This year they are on the main floor, and what they have listed is still about how a surface gets made: thread, hemp, wood, steel.
I would stand in front of Lee ShinJa first. She was born in Uljin in 1930. In 1971 her Wall Hanging moved the National Exhibition category from dyeing crafts to dyeing and weaving. Resurrection, 1975, is the later hanging: wool and synthetic thread, nearly three metres tall, with a fringe you will miss if you keep walking. The photograph above is the hanging. Next week it should be on this wall.
Ha Chong-Hyun is the second stop, and the picture below is why I would look before I arrive. Born in 1935, he has spent the years since the 1970s pushing oil through the back of hemp cloth. Conjunction 25-03 is this year's canvas, 162 by 130 centimetres, and the strokes sit on the weave. If Start Frieze London at Booth D11 is still in your notebook, the Ecriture at Johyun was the 2007 work on paper, and that stand closes on 18 October. O.A2 has a later one, Ecriture No. 220614, from 2022, acrylic on ceramic. Same painter, a harder surface, and you can feel the years between them.
Kim Lim's Link III, 1976, is the piece you measure with your arms. Acrylic and wood, 366.5 centimetres, closer to a line than to a picture. She was born in Singapore in 1936, trained at Saint Martin's and the Slade, and made her career in London. Beside that length, Suki Seokyeong Kang's Mountain #25-07 sits almost flat: painted steel, brass, leather scraps, silk and thread. The gallery dates her 1977 to 2025. Walk the wood, then get close enough to see the scraps.
Take Ninagawa's half is the Tokyo wall. Name it before you move on, or the booth will feel like a Seoul export with guests: Tsuruko Yamazaki, Kazuko Miyamoto, Koji Kamoji, Shinro Ohtake, Gozo Yoshimasu. Stay for two works from this decade. Ghada Amer's WORDS HAVE RHYTHM is embroidery worked into acrylic. Mire Lee's Untitled (Large Egg Skeleton) is steel and concrete, made this year. I would stay for the egg.
Then the balcony
Emergence is sixteen solo booths on the balconies over the nave. I would climb for two.
ROH, from Jakarta, has Thảo Nguyên Phan under the title Opaque Fragile. She was born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1987 and trained on a syllabus still marked by the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine. The new paintings go back to silk and lacquer, and the shapes come from the brise-soleil, the concrete sun screen on those mid-century facades. Stand still. From the aisle it just looks like a pattern.
P21, from Seoul, is at the fair for the first time, with Haneyl Choi, born in 1991. Sleepwalking is four mixed-media sculptures about a body losing its balance. The museum show of the same name opens at Art Sonje Center on 27 October, two days after the Grand Palais closes, and runs through 27 December. See the four sculptures here. If you want the exhibition, it is in Seoul, at 87 Yulgok-ro 3-gil.
Bank, with rooms in Shanghai and New York, can be the third stop: six cast-metal sculptures by Yibei Zhang, born in 1992. Then come down. The other solos will wait if the first three went too fast.
One public day
Empty Gallery, from Hong Kong, is in the main sector for the first time, and it has not published a checklist. Go in cold.
If you want a house you already know how to read, pick the city you miss. Kukje for Seoul and Busan. Taka Ishii for Tokyo, Kyoto, and Maebashi. Vitamin Creative Space for Beijing and Guangzhou. Antenna Space for Shanghai and Hong Kong. Stop at one. A mega-gallery with a Hong Kong or Seoul outpost will spend the hour and hand you a different fair. Do O.A2 and the balcony before you give it that.
The public door faces the nave, at 7 Avenue Winston Churchill. Days run 11:00 to 19:00. Full price is €47, the reduced rate €30. Friday 23 October, from 17:00 to 19:00, is €40, which is the ticket if the morning already belonged to someone else's booth. Thursday's vernissage, 22 October, 14:00 to 20:00, is €120, and it is the preview you can buy without a gallerist's card. The 21st, and Thursday morning, are still by invitation. Step outside and the day ticket is finished, so eat before you scan. Hours and the rest of the tariff are on Art Basel Paris.
Asia NOW is already open at the Monnaie de Paris, 11 Quai de Conti, through 24 October. The whole floor there is Asia and its diasporas, a different bet from hunting two booths inside a fair of 211. Give the mint its own afternoon. Noon there and three o'clock under the glass tends to become a queue and a blur. Champs-Élysées–Clemenceau is the metro. Once you are inside, O.A2 is the start. If the week began in West Kowloon, Fantasy Opens at M+ Before the Paris Fairs is the museum morning that makes this booth easier to read.
