Big changes are afoot at the 36-year-old FIAC, Paris’s leading contemporary art fair, which takes place annually in October. After a successful outing last year, despite the continued global recession, director Jennifer Flay says that exhibitor applications have doubled for this year’s edition. High-profile new entrants to the Gallic booths will include New York’s Metro Pictures; Max Hetzler and Contemporary Fine Arts, both from Berlin; London’s Victoria Miro; and Blum & Poe and Regen Projects, both from Los Angeles; and Gagosian Gallery, which has spaces in New York, Los Angeles, London, Rome, and Athens, and is planning to open a Paris space this year. (Last year, Gagosian participated along with nine other galleries in FIAC’s special “Projet Moderne” section, a museum-like setting devoted to modern masterpieces, but it is significant that the powerful dealer is now taking a full booth in the fair.)
It’s an indication of FIAC’s new importance to the contemporary market that it has become an appealing place to do business for leading dealers hoping to sell to a discerning clientele. “We are very picky about art fairs,” says Blum & Poe co-founder Tim Blum, who represents such high-profile artists as Takashi Murakami. Blum & Poe currently participates in only the most prestigious fairs — The Art Show (the Art Dealers Association of America‘s annual New York fair), Art Basel Miami Beach, and Art Basel. Blum adds that, having recently opened a new space in Los Angeles , added additional artists to his roster, and built a strong client base in England and France, “doing one fair in Europe wasn’t enough. And being in Paris, at FIAC, isn’t a bad way to spend a few days.”
Flay has served as the fair’s artistic director since 2003, and was recently appointed general director after her predecessor, Martin Bethenod, departed to become director at collector Francois Pinault’s Pallazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana museums in Venice. Flay says that 2,500 square meters of the Grand Palais — where FIAC takes place — are currently being restored, and that in 2011 the fair plans to consolidate all of the exhibitor booths in the vaulted space, using the additional Cour Carrée du Louvre venue, which now houses younger contemporary galleries, to show special projects.
Flay remembers that in 2003, when she joined the fair during its 30th anniversary year, “FIAC: Birthday or Burial?” was the headline of one particularly nettlesome magazine article. “It was something of a blow,” Flay recalls. “I told [FIAC parent company Reed Expositions] that everything about the fair had to be changed, and that that wouldn’t happen overnight.” In 2006, the fair went a long way towards rejuvenating its image when it left the convention center at Porte de Versailles and returned to its original venue, the Grand Palais, after that building’s renovations were completed. “We’ve come a long way,” says Flay.
