Oh La La! Interrupts Regular Programming at Art Basel Paris for Playful Provocation

For the first time since it landed in Paris two years ago, Art Basel has taken up the freshly renovated Grand Palais. On this occasion, the fair has launched a new initiative dubbed Oh La La! As a French woman lucky enough to travel the world, I wondered, ‘why not call the initiative ‘Ooh La La!’, an expression that, though rarely uttered in France, is treated as a quintessential French exclamation abroad.

“As a non-French-speaker, I could not say, but I realized that some people say ‘ouais’ [French for ‘yeah’] but still write it ‘oui’ [a formal ‘yes’ in French]. Isn’t it, in some way, the same thing?” Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s director of fairs and exhibition platforms, told ARTnews. Point taken.

Anne-Claudie Coric, the general director of Paris’ Galerie Templon, had a different take: “Oh la la is the one French expression that even non-French-speakers can indulge in: it’s playful and ambiguous, it may express awe, shock, or joy, exactly what experiencing art is all about!”

The general idea, it seems, was to keep the public on their toes. To do so, the Oh La La! campaign has encouraged 35 exhibitors in the fair’s main sector to showcase “unusual, thought-provoking, or rarely exhibited artworks” on October 18 and 19, the first two of Art Basel Paris’s three public days. (The invitation-only previews were on October 16 and 17.)

“The directors did a good job at approaching us in an informal, natural way. I particularly liked the idea of making space for something different at the fair,” said Massimo De Carlo, founder of the namesake gallery and a longtime participant of Art Basel.

The first edition of this initiative, centered on a wide range of themes—love, Surrealism, queer identity, history, eroticism—is intended to draw any VIPs inclined to indulge elsewhere in the City of Light back to the fair. The initiative also gives general visitors an opportunity to discover fresh art.

Paris-based galerie anne barrault responded directly to the concept with a drawing by French illustrator and filmmaker Roland Topor (1938-1997), who is probably best known for the avant-garde animated classic Fantastic Planet (1973). The work on view at Basel is titled Oh la la (1973) and features three women in different stages of consciousness amid a mysterious natural setting.

“I discovered Roland Topor through another fantastic artist, Paulina Olowska, who did a performance based on his Grotesque Alphabet for a show that I curated at the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis,” said de Bellis, who is happy to see Topor’s story come full circle in Paris.

Like other exhibitors, the Vienna-based Layr Gallery picked a different direction for their presentation. “We have been playing with the idea to introduce a historic position in the contemporary context for a while now, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so,” a spokesperson for the gallery said. On view at Layr is the aquatint Pflüger mit stehender Frau im Vordergrund (Plougher with standing woman in the foreground) by the German artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945).

Galerie Templon, meanwhile, pays homage to the Fluxus artist Benjamin Vautier (known in his work as Ben) who died at 88 earlier this year. Templon selected one of Vautier’s humorous painted slogans, featuring white, childlike handwriting on a black background. The title, Je peut tout me permettre (1971) has a spelling mistake (it’s peux, not peut), which proves the artist’s point: ‘I can afford to do anything.’

“This work marks Ben’s debut in Paris and appears like a fantastic moto for all artists today,” said Templon’s Coric. “We thought of him right away, because he is recognized to be one of the most influential artists of the French contemporary scene, he has been part of the gallery’s history since the very beginning in the 1960s, and because, before his passing, we were already planning a special show for his 90th birthday next year.”

Massimo De Carlo also saw Oh La La! as an opportunity to honor the past. “The concept that was presented to us was open to interpretation. Rather than focusing on the present, as expected at a contemporary art fair, we were more interested in demonstrating the historical depth of the gallery’s roster through a selection of works by Maurizio Cattelan, Thomas Grünfeld, Paola Pivi, Massimo Bartolini from 1999 only,” De Carlo said.

Galleria Continua’s proposition for Oh La La! flirts with provocation and banks on contrast and duality. “The themes that appeal to us the most are those of the unusual and the thought-provoking. We wanted to challenge conventional perceptions and spark curiosity”, said a representative of the gallery. On display is Pascale Marthine Tayou’s Poupée Pascale (Hybridation), a mixed-media figurative sculpture that represents a fusion of different cultures—specifically, various cultures hailing from Africa and Europe—a seminal theme for the artist.

“Tayou’s works carry significant political weight, vividly illustrating the complexities of cultural contrasts. Through a playful and colorful approach, he invites viewers to engage with these themes in an accessible manner,” the gallery added.

On a different note, fairgoers are all invited to have pre-dinner drinks at Air de Paris’s booth. The Romainville-based gallery, named after a Marcel Duchamp ready-made, has brought a neon sign by Japanese artist Shimabuku, who invented Sakepirinha, a drink based on the recipe for the Brazilian Caipirinha cocktail; and Bruno Pélassy’s Bye Bye Jeff (1998), a phallic sculpture thought to be a tribute to porn star Jeff Stryker. Also on view at the booth is Gaëlle Choisne’s ceramic piece L’éveil du cosmos (The Awakening of the Cosmos), from 2022. Choisne, you may have heard, just won the prestigious 2024 Marcel Duchamp Prize.

“Visitors are welcome to eat olives from Choisne’s work, sip an interpretation of Shimabuku’s Sakepirinha, while gazing at Pélassy’s giant phallus made of glass pearls,” co-founder Florence Bonnefous told ARTnews. “The works will be on view all day, but the bartender won’t arrive until 7 pm.”

So, will Oh La La! be a Paris-only program, or should we expect some iteration of it at the next Art Basel Miami this December? Or maybe at Art Basel, Switzerland?

“As you know, Art Basel has different titles for different sections that show similar things,” said de Bellis. The Meridians sector, for example, is the equivalent of Basel’s Unlimited and Hong Kong’s Encounters. “The Kabinett sector, which offers curated exhibitions within the fair, takes a lot of space and work already. We need to readjust a little, before we can introduce the Oh La La! concept in Miami.”