Every year, at the end of May, Parisian galleries join forces to create a modern and contemporary art trail that shines spotlight on the capital. For this 11th edition, 74 galleries subdivided into four districts – Marais, Matignon, north-east Paris, and Saint-Germain-des-Prés – will be presenting the work of more than 150 artists. The initiative is an opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with art-world insiders. We highlight six events in a program designed to fully immerse visitors in the vibrancy of the Parisian art scene.

Fabrice Hyber
‘Apocalyipstick’
Galerie Nathalie Obadia
Saturday, May 24, 11am to 7pm, and Sunday, May 25, 2pm to 6pm

Known for his cross-disciplinary approach blending art, science, and ecology, Fabrice Hyber has been exploring living systems and regeneration processes for more than 30 years. In this new series of paintings and ceramics, the artist approaches the idea of apocalypse not as an end, but as a necessary process of regeneration. Red, already present in his early works, returns as a central color, symbolizing for the artist the joyful energy of germination. Continuing his research into language, the body, and nature, this project sees Hyber propose an alternative vision of the end of days, in which past, present, and future are merely stages of a creation in perpetual motion.

Laura Garcia Karras
‘Calisté’
Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou
Opening on Saturday, May 24, 3pm to 8pm

For her first solo show at Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou, Laura Garcia Karras unveils a new series of vibrant oil-on-canvas paintings with luminous floral and organic motifs, which seek to convey the vitality of each plant. Foliage, corollas, and bursts of color intertwine in compositions where the pictorial material seems constantly to reinvent itself. These are canvas that, beyond the delicacy of their brushstrokes, offer spaces for meditation and invite us to enter into a dialogue with the botanical world.

Valentin Rilliet in conversation with Marie Maertens, at the occasion of ‘The Dream Synopsis’
Galerie Peter Kilchmann
Saturday, May 24, 5pm

Born in Geneva to a Swiss father and a Chinese mother, artist Valentin Rilliet’s new series of oil paintings and works on rice paper explore the tensions and resonances between his Chinese heritage and his Western art-school training. In ‘The Dream Synopsis’, he constructs an intimate mythology and visual language all his own. The artist will be at the gallery with Marie Maertens to talk with visitors and detail the multiple cultural narratives that fueled this series, initiated during his three-month residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai and completed in Geneva.

Diego Bianchi
‘ThéâtrEErreuR’
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff
Opening on Sunday, May 25, 2pm to 7pm

In his new series combining sculptures, videos, and installations, Argentine artist Diego Bianchi, currently in residence at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, immerses visitors in a shifting, elusive environment. The unsettling presence of objects and bodies, suspended between two states, questions our representations of reality on the brink of chaos. Through assemblages of chairs, pipes, and discarded items, that are sometimes sculptures, sometimes performances, Bianchi delivers a contemporary take on the still life and a biting critique of consumerism.

Nicole
At Your Feet (Be Ready)
Galerie Marcelle Alix
Performance on Sunday, May 25, 3:30 pm, on the occasion of the group exhibition ‘El fantasma de Tennessee’

As part of the exhibition ‘El fantasma de Tennessee’ (The Ghost of Tennessee), Ecuadorian artist Nicole presents At Your Feet (Be Ready), a performance in three parts (Be Ready, Stand By and Count the Days Until), created alongside two other female performers. Pertaining a body of work that questions the construction of a hypersexualized Latin American female identity shaped by capitalist and commercial dynamics, these performances explore sexual fetishes linked to feet and shoes. Absorbed in anodyne tasks performed in silence without interaction with the audience, the three women evoke the tormented heroines of American playwright Tennessee Williams, the exhibition’s central figure, and investigate forms of passive resistance to gender norms.

Encounter with Alison Saar on the occasion of ‘Sweet Life’
Galerie Lelong & Co.
Sunday, May 25, 4pm to 5pm

A major figure on the American art scene, Alison Saar has been a fixture of Parisian public space since 2024 thanks to Salon, a sculpture she created for last year’s Olympic Games that is permanently displayed in the Charles-Aznavour Garden on the Champs-Elysées. Returning to Paris for Gallery Weekend, the artist will present her new exhibition, ‘Sweet Life’, at Galerie Lelong & Co. Here, the artist confronts two perceptions of the history of slavery and colonization through the example of sugar: pleasure for some, bitterness for others; sweetness here, violence there. The works on display – wood and metal sculptures, white ceramic busts, paintings on burlap, and textile prints – give life to powerful female figures, embodying memory, transmission, and resilience.