This year’s Art Basel Paris had a twist: the VIP preview on Wednesday actually wasn’t the first time visitors were let into the fair. The day before, in a newly introduced event dubbed Avant-Première, Art Basel Paris’s 206 exhibitors were allowed to extend up to six invitations to collectors of their choosing. Avant-Première was meant to create an intimate atmosphere that differed from the busier vibe of a VIP preview, but many dealers said the day fell short of expectations.
The actual VIP preview did not. Lines began forming as early as 9:20 a.m. with visitors eager to beat the rush and be among the first to get in. It hardly seemed that the departure of director Clément Delépine, who announced last September that he was leaving for to join the Lafayette Anticipations art space, had any impact on the proceedings.
According to multiple dealers who spoke with ARTnews, experimental art was alive and well here at the Grand Palais. Kinetic art also looms large, with moving works here by Philippe Parreno at Pilar Corrias’s booth and Meriem Bennani at Ludovico Corsini’s. And that’s not to Julius von Bismarck’s installation, on view at the Petit Palais as part of Art Basel’s Public Program.
The 2025 edition has 29 first-time participants, including 13 newcomers to the main sector, among them the Approach from London and Ludovico Corsini from Brussels. Twenty exhibitors are presenting joint booths, wherein dealers team up to present art together—more than ever before at this fair.
Below, a look at the best booths at Art Basel Paris, which runs until October 26.
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Selome Muleta and Helena Uambembe at Jan Kaps
Image Credit: Courtesy Jan Kaps
For its Art Basel debut, Cologne-based gallery Jan Kaps has brought work by Selome Muleta and Helena Uambembe, from Ethiopia and South Africa, respectively—two artists who blend the personal and the political. Muleta’s introspective “Motion” paintings depict women in intimate domestic spaces, where translucent figures and fluid colors blur the line between body and environment. Her works are installed around a small yet commanding wood sculpture by Uambembe, who here reconstructs landscapes shaped by displacement and inherited memory, mapping the impact of colonial and political histories on one’s identity. At this booth, Uambembe also has a recent painting depicting a solitary figure in a lush, abstract environment.
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Robert Rauschenberg at Thaddaeus Ropac
Image Credit: Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac
Thaddaeus Ropac’s booth has figuration and abstraction, works in color and black and white, painting and sculpture, old and new—an aesthetic whirlwind. Upon arrival, Robert Rauschenberg’s Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba (1983) immediately catches the eye. This impressive piece—a “claywork,” as Rauschenberg called it, that remakes Jacques-Louis David’s Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, an 1801 equestrian portrait commissioned by King Charles IV of Spain to mainting good diplomatic relations with France—resonates with the blockbuster exhibition currently devoted to the French master at the Louvre. Another citational, though smaller, work on view is Elizabeth Peyton’s The Solemn entry of Louis XIV 1667 (2016), an oil on board inspired by Adam Frans van der Meulen’s 1667 painting held at the Château de Versailles. Peyton infuses the epic scene with psychological depth, cropping out the queen and imbuing the king with a striking sense of vulnerability.
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Martial Raysse at Templon
Image Credit: ©Martial Raysse Studio/Courtesy the artist and Templon, Paris, Brussels, and New York
As usual, Templon opted to showcase a broad overview of its roster, featuring Valerio Adami, Jean-Michel Alberola, Omar Ba, and Prune Nourry, among others. The highlight is a pair of paintings by Martial Raysse, who recently joined the gallery. La Paix (Peace) is a 2023 acrylic painting depicting a vibrant frieze of stylized figures in a communal, almost utopian setting. Despite its title, the work balances celebration with subtle unease through its exaggerated colors and its sitters’ ambiguous expressions. It stands as a reflective statement on human connection. “It was important for us to bring peace here, even if peace is not a cut-and-clear concept,” said Anne-Claudine Coric, general director of Paris’s Galerie Templon, who then pointed to a sculpture Gérard Garouste created in response to the events of October 7, 2023—a symbolic tree of life growing from ruins, its branches bearing Hebrew letters that spell out “Da Lifnei Mi Atah Omed” (“Know before whom you stand”).
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Hector Hyppolite at the Gallery of Everything
Image Credit: Courtesy the Gallery of Everything
The London-based Gallery of Everything returns to Art Basel Paris’s Premise sector with a solo spotlight on Hector Hyppolite (1894–1948), a self-taught Haitian priest and painter who brought Vodou spirituality to the global art scene. “His work has nothing to do with Haitian art. If you label it that way, you’re lumping it in with something that came later—and that was largely an American invention,” said James Brett, the creative director of the gallery who first heard of Hyppolite 25 years ago. “I am not denying the origins, but I reject the minimizing of the power of the first Black Surrealist—which he is. He is one of that generation of hiding-in-plain-sight artists.”
When André Breton visited Haiti in 1944, he was immediately captivated by Hyppolite’s vivid and symbol-laden paintings. At the center of the booth are three original works that appeared in the landmark “Le Surréalisme en 1947” show. Among them is Papa Lauco (1945), which was featured as the very first plate in the exhibition catalog. The presentation also includes 25 rarely seen works on paper, card, and board, including multiple portraits of Hyppolite’s muse and spirit guide, Erzulie.
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Gerhard Richter and George Condo at Hauser & Wirth
Image Credit: Photo Nicolas Brasseur/Artworks courtesy the artists and estates and Hauser & Wirth
The mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth has made a conscious effort to align itself closely with the Parisian art community, celebrating major institutional exhibitions across the city. “We just sold our crown jewel—an exceptional 1987 abstract painting by Gerhard Richter—at our stand. It’s clear that, like the view above us at the Grand Palais, the sky’s the limit,” said president Iwan Wirth on the VVIP day of the fair. The painting changed hands for $23 million. Richter is currently the subject of a blockbuster exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
Also on view at the booth is George Condo’s Femme de Monaco (2025), a recent acrylic and pastel on linen, which fetched $1.8 million on October 21. The 67-year-old American artist is having a solo exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne; this new painting depicts a stylized female figure with exaggerated, fragmented features that are typical of Condo’s style, which envisions identity as fractured and subject to change.
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Nefeli Papadimouli at the Pill
Image Credit: Rebecca Fanuele
One hour after the opening of the Avant-Première day, The Pill (of Istanbul and Paris) sold Idiopolis, a colorful multipart textile installation by Greek artist Nefeli Papadimouli, to a French collector. The title translates as “a city (polis) of individuals (idiotis),” alluding to the work’s form: it features cut-out figures that can be detached from the background. When viewed separately—individually—each textile piece is referred to as an idiot. Here, the term is meant kindly, almost affectionately. “It’s incredible that my first time here is also the first time I get to show my work,” Papadimouli told ARTnews.
The Greek-born, Paris-based artist typically blends her background in architecture with her passion for dance in participatory performances, where audiences are invited—via open call—to slip into her wearable textile pieces and take part in collective choreographies. While this Idiopolis won’t be activated during Art Basel Paris, the version in the FRAC Limoges collection will be brought to life in early December. Also on display in this booth, a standout in the the Émergence sector for emerging artists, is Capsule, Papadimouli’s first sculpture—a life-size amphora that marks the beginning of a series exploring the relationship between the body and time.
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Lulua Alyahya at ATHR Gallery
Image Credit: Courtesy ATHR Gallery
Founded in 2009 in Jeddah, ATHR Gallery is the only Saudi exhibitor at this year’s Art Basel Paris. Its booth brings together works by three female artists: Sarah Abu Abdallah, Hayfa Algwaiz, and Lulua Alyahya, the last of whom was born in Bahrain and studied in London. Alyahya’s paintings feature men and subtly subvert the male gaze. “I am interested in being a woman painting men,” she said in an interview at the booth. Her dislocated, often idle figures—who are shown napping or scrolling on their phones—occupy sparse, ambiguous spaces. Drawing on her upbringing with three older brothers, Alyahya captures the gestures and postures of Saudi men with quiet intimacy. “It started as a way to hold up a mirror to men,” she said, explaining that her work challenges Western assumptions while adding that her work may resonate with Saudi viewers, too.
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Gina Fischli at Chapter NY and Soft Opening
Image Credit: Sarah Belmont/ARTnews
At Chapter NY’s and Soft Opening’s booth, Zurich-based artist Gina Fischli stages a runway of urban animals, including an endearing pink cat. Fischli exposes how we project control through care, turning pets into symbols of submission. Her catwalk may point to the world of fashion or symbolize the ways animals are exploitatively put on show. Along the way, Fischli also questions whether art itself has become domesticated—overdesigned, overbred, and tamed by a desire to please.
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Xiyadie at Blindspot
Image Credit: Courtesy Blindspot
In the fair’s Émergence sector, the Hong Kong–based Blindspot Gallery makes its Art Basel Paris debut with a solo exhibition by Xiyadie, a self-taught artist who transforms traditional Chinese papercutting into a radical form of queer expression. Raised in rural China, he learned the craft from his mother and village elders, later using it a cathartic means of chronicling his life as a gay man. His intricate works depict male lovers in pastoral dreamscapes filled with peonies, animals, and celestial motifs. In Torn (2025), Xiyadie visualizes his inner conflict, picturing a self caught between a yearning for spiritual purity, symbolized by a Buddha on a mountaintop, and the pull of earthly desire. A blazing fire burns beneath him.
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Patrick Goddard and Josèfa Ntjam at Nicoletti and Seventeen
Image Credit: Courtesy Nicoletti and Seventeen
Beware of the 1,500 silver larvae that appear to have devoured the navy-blue carpet lying on the floor of Nicoletti and Seventeen’s shared booth. The seemingly eroded textile, brought by the latter gallery, is connected to a sound piece in which a woman recounts how her home is gradually invaded by insects. This installation by British artist Patrick Goddard unfolds as a metaphor for how others may infiltrate and reshape a territory—transforming, in this case, a domestic space into a work of art.
Behind this intriguing work hangs Josèfa Ntjam’s The Undercommons (2025), an altarpiece formed from photomontages printed on aluminium and set within a moving wooden structure. Drawing her inspiration from Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1503–15), Ntjam conjures a hybrid world where portraits of independence fighters and African deities blend with mythological creatures and molecular forms, creating parallels between natural survival strategies and the resistance tactics of marginalized communities throughout history.
