Paris, France — The celebrated and somewhat hectic Paris art week drew more or less to a close last October 26th although a bevy of cultural offerings are still on around town. The week is peppered with an array of art fairs largely devoted to contemporary art and featuring artists from around the world. One of the high points of the week that caught our eye here at The Gourmet Gazette was the OFFSCREEN show with its unique offering of installations and still and moving images. It also takes place in an uncanny venue, the Grande Garage Haussmann, a keen example of brutalist architecture stunningly outfitted with an Art Deco facade, and which as its name implies was a public parking garage that is converted into a high climbing exhibition space for the event.

This year’s OFFSCREEN, being held for the third time, brought together 28 solo show presentations with the guest of honor being the late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman and attracted some 8,000 visitors. One of the most eye-catching installations at this atypical fair was a 12-meter mural sized installation work featuring the covers of the American publication Life Magazine from 1936 until 1996 by the New York-based artist Alfredo Jaar entitled Searching for Africa in Life, in reference to the fact that subjects and personalities from Africa are few and far between on the magazine’s covers. Founded as a general interest publication in 1883 in New York City, under the new ownership of Henry Luce, it transposed in 1936 into a magazine that was known for being one of the great and the first news magazine highlighting photojournalism. Also of note was La Chambre, the film by Chantal Akerman that was presented by the Marian Goodman Gallery. The roughly 11-minute film in traveling shots recounts the space in the bedroom of a young woman and was made by Akerman, who starred in her own role in the short, in New York City in 1972 when the filmmaker was just 22-years-old. She died in 2015.

The guest curators from 20 renowned international institutions like the Whitney and the Tate, participated in the first edition of the Cultish x OFFSCREEN Prize. This new partnership with Cultish, the label dedicated to the dialogue between art, culture, and craft initiated by Publicis Luxe, awarded the work of Susan Brockman, presented by Soft Network (USA), with a financial grant. Susan Brockman’s experimental films and photographs, shown for the first time in Europe at OFFSCREEN, were created over twenty years ago before her passing. A special mention was awarded to the installation The Washington Monument by Lita Albuquerque, presented by Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach.

OFFSCREEN is led and curated by artistic director Julien Frydman and was co-founded by Julien Frydman and Jean-Daniel Compain in 2022. But next year’s show won’t be held in the iconic Grande Garage which had been a brilliant piece of urban revival for the venue is to be transformed into, well, something else. Special to The Gourmet Gazette.
https://offscreenparis.com/