Paris Art Digest #04: What Paris Is Showing Right Now

Esther Schipper
16 place Vendôme, 75001 Paris
Until August 1, 2026

Migration, memory, language and diaspora: six artists from five continents examine what it means to belong to a place that no longer exists — or one that perhaps never did.

The setting is part of the experience. At 16 place Vendôme, a listed eighteenth-century hôtel particulier opens its enfilades to contemporary art, creating an unexpected dialogue between Parisian heritage and questions of identity, displacement and belonging.

The exhibition was entering its final two weeks.

54 rue de la Verrerie, 75004 Paris
Until September 19, 2026

Dialogues brings together artists whose work deliberately dissolves the boundary between functional object and sculpture.

The result is a slow, intelligent summer exhibition, positioned somewhere between collectible design and contemporary art. It is a thoughtful address for those interested in the way objects move from use to culture, and from craft to artistic expression.

13 rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris
Until August 1, 2026

Saype’s monumental biodegradable murals are presented simultaneously at two locations: Galerie Danysz in the Marais and in a large-scale outdoor installation at Giverny.

Made from chalk, water and plant extracts, the artist’s works are designed to return gradually to the earth. The gallery exhibition offers a fuller view of Saype’s practice, while Giverny provides the spectacle of encountering land art at monumental scale.

Giverny, Normandy
Approximately 1 hour 30 minutes from Paris Saint-Lazare

Saype created a monumental mural directly on the grass using biodegradable pigments made from chalk, water and plant extracts. The work was designed to last only a few weeks before gradually returning to the earth.

Combined with Monet’s house and garden next door, the installation offered one of the more singular ways to spend a summer day outside Paris: part contemporary art, part landscape, part fleeting encounter.

18 rue de la Verrerie, 75004 Paris
Until January 4, 2027

At the Alaïa Foundation, housed in the couturier’s former private mansion in the Marais, this exhibition explored the intimate dialogue between Azzedine Alaïa and Shiro Kuramata.

The Japanese designer understood that fashion and design could speak the same formal language. The exhibition brought those affinities into focus through a conversation between silhouettes, materials, structure and space.

The cellars of the foundation were extraordinary. The friendship documented by the exhibition was even more so.

Valérie John works from Martinique and the Caribbean diaspora, weaving material culture, ecology and ancestral memory into immersive installations.

Her work brings together questions of landscape, transmission and identity, using the exhibition space as an environment rather than a neutral container. The opening days offered the opportunity to encounter the exhibition before the summer crowds settled in.

Grand Palais
Closing Sunday, July 26, 2026

For five days, Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost transformed the Grand Palais into a total sensory environment.

Working between Paris, Antwerp and Los Angeles, Prouvost combines video, sculpture, text and traces of performance in an installation that seemed to occupy the building as though the Grand Palais itself were dreaming.

It was one of the most discussed installations of the season. The recommendation was simple: do not wait until Saturday.

Grand Palais Méditerranée
Closing Sunday, July 26, 2026

Wael Shawky’s Drama 1882 is an operatic film in classical Arabic recounting the Urabi Revolt, a moment when Egypt nearly chose a different history.

Shawky works simultaneously as filmmaker, opera composer and historian. The Grand Palais Méditerranée gave the work the scale and atmosphere it required.

This was another exhibition to see before the end of the week.

Grand Palais
Until September 6, 2026

Known for turning architecture into illusion, the Argentine artist Leandro Erlich filled the Grand Palais with rooms that were not rooms and buildings that were not buildings.

The exhibition invited visitors to question what they were seeing, and how architecture shapes perception. With the summer crowds now established, the period offered an appropriate moment to discover the exhibition at the Grand Palais.

Grand Palais
Until August 30, 2026

Still the defining exhibition of the summer, Hilma af Klint’s Paintings for the Temple remained a priority for visitors interested in the spiritual, symbolic and visionary dimensions of modern art.

Those who chose to see Laure Prouvost or Wael Shawky before their closing dates could return to the Grand Palais later in the summer for af Klint, before the end of August.