If you love art, don’t miss Art Basel in Paris: the art shows you can’t skip

The 2025 edition of Art Basel Paris is scheduled for October 24–26 at the Grand Palais, the monumental building originally constructed for the 1900 Universal Exhibition and today one of the most iconic exhibition venues in the French capital.

The Palais d’Iéna, a masterpiece by Auguste Perret and a Parisian symbol of modernism, combines the solidity of concrete with the elegance of neoclassical language, and will host 30 Blizzards, a special project by Helen Marten. The work spans multiple disciplines and draws on experiences of childhood, community, sexuality, interiority, and loss. The exhibition unfolds through a dialogue between five sculptures and five videos, enriched by a live performance conceived with opera director Fabio Cherstich and composer Beatrice Dillon: an immersive choreography that interweaves libretto, images, sounds, and presences.

Place Vendôme is a neoclassical square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, renowned for its elegant architecture, the Vendôme Column at its center, and its luxury boutiques, particularly jewelers and high-fashion houses. It is distinguished by the regularity and symmetrical uniformity of the surrounding buildings. Commissioned by Louis XIV through a decree signed in 1686, it was originally intended to house the Royal Library, the Academies, and an equestrian statue of the king. On the occasion of Art Basel 2025, it will host an inflatable installation by Alex Da Corte.

Artist Alex Da Corte’s installation revisits the 1991 Thanksgiving Parade in New York, when the giant Kermit the Frog balloon tore open and collapsed half-deflated along Fifth Avenue. Recreated here as an inflatable sculpture, Kermit remains suspended in a perpetual moment of collapse—between irony and melancholy—reflecting on how cultural icons absorb and echo our shared vulnerabilities.

Avenue Winston Churchill, which separates the Petit Palais from the Grand Palais, will be transformed into an open-air museum, with contemporary installations presented thanks to the support of the fair and the artists’ representing galleries.

The public art project will take place on Avenue Winston Churchill in Paris, featuring works by Thomas Houseago, Leiko Ikemura, Wang Keping, Vojtěch Kovařík, Muller Van Severen, Stefan Rinck, and Arlene Shechet.

The Hôtel de la Marine is one of the landmarks of French heritage. Just steps from the Tuileries Gardens, it offers a spectacular view over Place de la Concorde. Designed in the 18th century by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, chief architect to King Louis XV, the building was originally home to the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, the institution in charge of furnishing the royal palaces, before serving for more than two centuries as the headquarters of the French Navy. Steeped in history, it has witnessed the great transformations of France, from the royal era to the present day.

In the courtyard of the Hôtel de la Marine, Joël Andrianomearisoa unveils a monumental textile installation that weaves together history, memory, and ritual. With vivid colours and dense textures evoking the abundance of the natural world, the work opens onto an imaginary landscape inspired by a poetry collection by Maurice Ramarozaka. Bringing to Paris the symbolic power of Malagasy fiber arts, it belongs to a series of which three pieces are already held in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Petit Palais, located between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine, was built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition as the Palace of Fine Arts, in tandem with the Grand Palais. Designed by architect Charles Girault, the building blends classical and modern elements: its monumental façade marked by Corinthian columns, the grand arched portal adorned with allegorical sculptures, and an elegant inner courtyard with a garden reminiscent of Renaissance cloisters. Today, the Petit Palais houses the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, with collections ranging from antiquity to the 20th century, alongside major international temporary exhibitions.

Julius von Bismarck often uses the notion of risk to unsettle established certainties. In The Elephant in the Room, he juxtaposes a taxidermy giraffe with an equestrian statue of Otto von Bismarck, both collapsing and reassembling in asynchronous loops—mechanical puppets that question the role of monuments in shaping collective memory, between the exploitation of nature and political mythmaking. His series OOOSB compresses flora, fauna, and remnants of civilisation into stratified panels, while the video Grenzen der Intelligenzen captures insects drawn to artificial lights, a metaphor for the disoriented fragility of living beings. This entire constellation now unfolds within the extraordinary setting of the Petit Palais in Paris.

The Chapelle des Petits-Augustins is part of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Originally belonging to a 17th-century convent, it was transformed in the 19th century into the academy’s chapel and today stands as one of the most evocative spaces within the complex. With its Gothic vaults and strong historical resonance, the chapel is now often used as an exhibition venue, providing a unique setting where past and present converge.

Harry Nuriev blends art and design to reinvent our relationship with everyday objects. Guided by his philosophy of “Transformism,” Objets Trouvés invites visitors to exchange unwanted items placed in supermarket boxes, each swap recorded and later compiled into a publication. By turning cast-offs into curated artifacts, Nuriev questions the very notion of value and prompts reflection on what we choose to keep, discard, or share.

The Parvis, the wide forecourt in front of the Institut de France, overlooks the Seine with a view of the Pont des Arts and stands as one of the most striking examples of 17th-century Parisian architecture.

Ugo Rondinone places stone at the core of his practice, a symbol of humanity’s origins. the innocent, part of his Stone Figures series, is a four-metre totemic body of stacked rocks. Installed on the Parvis de l’Institut de France, it bridges the archaic and the contemporary with a commanding presence.

Over the years, Paris Internationale has established itself as a new model within the ecosystem of international contemporary art fairs. Now in its 11th edition, it supports a new generation of galleries. Founded in 2015, this year it takes place at the Rond-point des Champs-Élysées, in Paris’s 8th arrondissement.

This year, Offscreen Paris takes over a new venue, the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, presenting a selection of historical and contemporary artists working with installations and experimental image-based practices.

At the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, the exhibition Minimal traces the global and international evolution of a movement that, since the early 1960s, has radically redefined the status of the artwork.

Charles Zana will open the doors of the former Swedish Circle on Rue de Rivoli with In Situ, an exhibition that transforms a Haussmannian apartment into a journey through design, architecture, and contemporary art. Curated by Paul Calligaro, the show will feature over 30 new creations by Zana, along with a personal cabinet of curiosities including, among others, Polaroids by Carlo Mollino, pieces by Ettore Sottsass, and works by Eugène Carrière — revealing Zana’s sources of inspiration and his sensibility as a collector.

During the days of the fair, the versatile and elusive work of one of the great masters of our time is honored with a double exhibition: at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a monumental retrospective spans the artist’s entire career (1962–2024); while at the Paris outpost of David Zwirner Gallery, his practice is explored in greater depth.

Galerie Chantal Crousel presents Rirkrit Tiravanija’s new exhibition, IN ALIENS WE TRUST, bringing together a selection of recent works, including collaborations with long-time artist friends. The result is a solo show in which the artist deepens his exploration of community and otherness through various media: sculpture, canvases layered with newspaper and silver leaf, and photography.

Also highly anticipated is the return of Daniel Buren to Paris with the exhibition Du Cercle aux carrés, travaux situés et in situ at Mennour.

Galerie Allen puts the spotlight on Trevor Yeung. His new series, Redundant Lovers (2025), consists of ten painted mussel shells mounted on the wall—awkwardly oversized, almost unnatural in scale. These shells are byproducts of Southeast China’s freshwater pearling industry, which supplies most of the world’s pearls. Trevor Yeung transforms them with ink and mineral pigments, materials valued for their permanence compared to watercolors or oils. Instead of the precious pearl that might once have grown inside, he paints concentric circles within the hollow shells—what he describes as “remains of hope and lower expectations.”

At Romero Paprocki, Paola Siri Renard presents her first solo exhibition in Paris. Between skeletal remains of buildings or animals, fossil fragments and mechanized presences, bone fractures and cyborg prostheses, the artist strains the fragile boundary between nature and culture, tracing new continuities between imaginaries and morphologies that have shaped our collective past, present, and future.

Galerie Semiose launches its collaboration with German painter Helene Appel through her first solo exhibition in France. Since the 2000s, she has painted everyday subjects — shells, headlights, drains, soapy water — at life scale on raw linen with uncompromising realism. Her practice elevates the ordinary into a radical reflection on the relationship between art and reality.

At DS Galerie, the duo Xolo Cuintle (Romy Texier and Valentin Vie Binet) presents Pulses Within, transforming the gallery into a living membrane. Concrete and stoneware sculptures unfold hybrid, organic forms that blur the boundaries between the biological and the mechanical. The exhibition conjures an interconnected world where architecture itself breathes like an organism.