Paris Internationale
For its 12th edition, Paris Internationale moved to Quai de Valmy, beside the Canal Saint-Martin, one of my favourite parts of Paris. The independent contemporary art fair brought together 56 galleries and five non-profit spaces from 19 countries, including 15 first-time participants, each presenting a distinct ensemble of works.
Paris Internationale has always had a distinctive flair, characterised by its independent and collaborative approach, as well as its interest in both emerging and established artists. This year, that spirit was as visible as ever. It is a pleasure to see a fair make room for discovery, boldness and experimentation without asking permission to do so. Read more about Paris Internationale on its official website.
Paris Internationale Artist Highlight: Isaac Lythgoe at Piktogram
Isaac Lythgoe is represented by Warsaw-based gallery and non-profit, Piktogram. The Paris-based multidisciplinary artist works primarily with sculpture, drawing and new media. His practice uses world-building and storytelling to explore technology, mortality, ethics, romance and the social structures of the future. These ideas emerge both conceptually and materially, with symbolic organic materials and new media techniques brought together in handmade and machine-made forms.
At Paris Internationale, his sculptures and paintings created the immediate sense of stepping into a universe of their own. Hyper-realistic figures appeared alongside ambiguous and abstract forms, suggesting a storyline that was never fully revealed. The works invited reflection on our relationships to ourselves, one another, technology and the future. The sculptures, in particular, carried an eerie and existential quality, leaving us feeling alienated and connected at the same time.
Asia NOW
Asia NOW, held at the Monnaie de Paris, is a leading art fair for contemporary art from across Asia and its diasporas, and we had the pleasure of attending the collectors’ brunch preview, getting a first look at the fair’s artistic programme. For its 12th edition, Asia NOW brought together 60 participants, including galleries and institutions, and more than 200 artists from Asia and its diaspora. What makes the fair special is not only its thoughtful, elaborate and diverse programme, which included curatorial projects, special installations, panel discussions, performances, screenings and workshops, but also its ambition to challenge the way Asia is understood within the contemporary art world.
This year’s theme, Sentimental Value, explored how artworks, objects and materials acquire meaning through memory, labour, care and relationships. The fair’s own framing of Asia as both a geographical region and a methodology was reflected in this wider programme. For us, this made Asia NOW feel like more than a marketplace. It created space to think about how artistic and cultural value is formed, carried and shared. Read more about the fair on the Asia NOW 2026 website.
Asia NOW Artist Highlight: Tseng Chien-Ying at Esther Schipper gallery
Tseng Chien-Ying, represented by Esther Schipper, is an artist from Taiwan who works primarily with traditional East Asian painting media and techniques to depict the psychological states of people in contemporary society. Working across ink and gouache on paper, as well as ceramic sculpture, he uses mineral pigments whose particular qualities have allowed him to develop several techniques. Some of these are inherited from older traditions, while others are innovative approaches developed by the artist himself. His work draws on techniques such as baimiao, a form of line drawing without shading, and jiaocaihua, literally “glue-colour painting.” This interplay between inherited traditions and innovation gives his figures their distinctive visual character.
The artist shares that gazing is a way of reflecting on the intertwining of the spiritual and material worlds, an idea that also informs the way he depicts the figures in his paintings. The works presented at Asia NOW included figures with prominent jewellery that immediately caught our attention and drew us towards them. Chien-Ying sees smoking, piercings and jewellery as ways of signalling or affirming one’s existence within a group. These details function not only as adornment, but also as markers of identity, belonging and self-presentation, bringing the works into dialogue with fashion, ritual and contemporary social codes. The lustre of the metallic leaf gives these ideas a material presence, allowing the paintings to hold several layers of feeling at once.
Post-Fair
Post-Fair made its inaugural Paris appearance this year, across two neighbouring locations on Rue du Temple in the Marais. In a more intimate setting, the fair presented 34 solo and duo exhibitions by emerging and mid-sized galleries from New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, London, São Paulo, Paris, Buenos Aires and beyond.
Founded in Los Angeles in 2025, Post-Fair developed its format in response to the pressures of the conventional art fair model. It favours carefully curated solo presentations in an open-plan exhibition setting rather than the scale and repetition of a traditional fair. The format is designed to encourage deeper engagement between artworks, galleries and audiences, and in our experience, it did.
Stepping into the fair felt more intimate and personal than visiting a conventional art fair. We found ourselves stopping for longer at individual presentations and speaking with gallerists and artists in a more relaxed setting. Read more about Post-Fair Paris.
Post-Fair Artist Highlight: Maya Hewitt at Aresti Cervera
Our artist highlight from Post-Fair was Maya Hewitt, represented by Aresti Cervera, a Madrid-based gallery. Hewitt is an English painter whose figurative works contain strong symbolic narratives that feel dreamlike yet deeply familiar.
The works on paper presented at Post-Fair explored motherhood, evoking a slightly melancholic but tender atmosphere. Hewitt studied in Japan, which has informed her painting style, including her use of flattened and tilted perspectives reminiscent of the Japanese fukinuki yatai technique.
Although smaller in scale, her works are rich in detail and create an expansive, dreamlike atmosphere. They seem to extend beyond their physical dimensions, drawing you into a sense of space one might expect from a larger abstract work. Hewitt’s paintings feel assertive yet calm, drawing you in through their intricate details and quietly familiar imagery.
These are only a few of the highlights from the first three fairs we visited. There was plenty more that made us stop, look twice and think, as well as much that simply caught our eye. Visit our Instagram for more of our Paris Art Week discoveries.
