On October 20, the second edition of Paris+ par Art Basel will take place in the French capital, featuring a rich two-day program dedicated to public art, spread throughout the city. Indeed, this year’s event expands its presence beyond the confines of the central location, the Grand Palais Ephémère, with three exhibitions, two monumental outdoor installations, and a series of lectures in six iconic venues, including the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and Place Vendôme, the square of the Institut de France, the Palais d'Iéna, and the Centre Pompidou. Here are five projects not to be missed.

Swiss artist Urs Fischer will present a five-meter-tall aluminum sculpture at Place Vendome: Wave, created in 2018. The work is supported by a pedestal that represents an enlarged version of a pressed, kneaded, and flattened clay block by the artist. This amplifies the tactile details imprinted on the material. The artwork resembles a massive, glittering wave and thematizes contextual ambiguity, reinforced by the play of dimensions. The project is presented by Gagosian.

At the Tuileries, Annabelle Ténèze has curated an exhibition of public art that involves several significant protagonists and explores the garden as a place where plants, minerals, water, and animals coexist. The showcased works aim to underline the interdependent bond of all elements that give life to the organic world, challenging the way we interact with nature. Among the artists participating in the exhibition are Joël Andrianomearisoa, Meriem Bennani, Jacqueline de Jong, Vojtech Kovarik, Zanele Muholi, Jean Prouvé & Pierre Jeanneret, and Claudia Wieser. The exhibition also hosts works specifically produced for the occasion.

The square of the Institut de France, a 17th-century building facing the Pont des Arts, will house the monumental sculpture by American artist Sheila Hicks, VERS DE HORIZONS NOUVEAUX. Created this year, the work is a six-meter-tall column covered with fibers of various colors obtained from natural pigments from Turkey and acrylic colors, and it engages in open dialogue with Constantin Brancusi’s Infinity Column from 1938. Hicks, who has been living and working in Paris since 1964, has found in textiles the perfect material to break free from rigid artistic classifications, granting her infinite possibilities. The project is presented by Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris, in collaboration with Meyer Riegger in Berlin and Karlsruhe, and Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia.

In the exhibition spaces of the Palais d’Iéna, built by Auguste Perret in 1937, the art historian Matthieu Poirier, in collaboration with Galleria Continua, opens a dialogue between two prominent artists, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Daniel Buren, bringing together site-specific elements created in response to the architectural features of the Palais d’Iéna and its intricate symmetry.

The exhibition of British artist Jessica Warboys at the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins des Beaux-Arts de Paris investigates the overlap between culture and nature. THIS TAIL GROWS AMONG RUINS (2023) is a multi-channel audio and video installation positioned next to SEA RIVER O (2023), a large-scale collage of paintings derived from two ongoing projects, Sea Painting (2009-present) and River Painting (2019-present), created by submerging canvases in seawater and river water and then laying them out on the shore. It is as if the works were created not only by the artist but also by the wind, water, and sand. The installation’s soundtrack incorporates ultrasonic recordings of bats and original compositions by Morten Norbye Halvorsen. The video follows the metamorphic journey of a candle (as in Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia) through various settings: an ancient forest, a 17th-century convent, a library, rivers, and seas. Everything speaks of a continuous and collective transformation.