Candy floss flies and sales fly away at FIAC de Paris

By Harry Bellet Posted today at 07:00, updated at 11:09

Time to Reading 3 min.

Subscribers article

In good restaurants, we dream of tasting everything. Except to be Gargantua or Depardieu, it's impossible. The 46^e edition of the International Fair of Contemporary Art (FIAC) in Paris leaves the same frustration: 197 galleries at the Grand Palais, but also present in front, at the Petit Palais, and in the Winston-Churchill avenue which separates them, where some artists cohabit with food trucks. Sometimes competing with them, like Vivien Roubaud, whose machine sends cotton candy to all the winds.

Because art, at the FIAC, it devours: Daniel Buren, some of whom make a whole cheese, exposes the fruits of his collaboration with The Laughing Cow, and we can acquire one of his works for 5 euros a box of 24 portions … It will take for it to have paid the entrance fee to the Grand Palais (38 euros the full price) and, if you want light lunch, left his coat in the cloakroom (2 euros). But there is also a free party: in the Tuileries Garden, where the FIAC also overflows with about twenty outdoor installations, at the Place de la Concorde where are installed ephemeral architectures, from Jean Prouve to Odile Decq, and a Transchromic circular environment, modern Stonehenge by Carlos Cruz-Diez.

Flowers also flourish "off", often more accessible. For young people, or those who want to stay, Paris International, 52 galleries at 16, rue Alfred-de-Vigny (8^e). Those attached to the traditional Paris school will visit the hundred stands located on the Champs-Elysees near the Grand Palais, under the tents of Art Elysees or, for the most modernists, the Galeristes exhibition at Carreau du Temple (3^e). For dreams of distant horizons, Asia Now, 50 galleries installed at 9, avenue Hoche (8^e), and for other art lovers, who are not all raw, Outsider Art Fair, 42 exhibitors at 60, rue de Richelieu (2^e). Some 24 resistance fighters also found refuge at the Cite internationale des arts, 18, rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville (4^e), under the nice name of "Welcome".