Here Are the 14 Must-See Solo Shows in Paris This Summer

European summer is officially upon us: full linen sets, seaside white wines and mussels, and… an inescapable heatwave? Even culture’s best dressed have been caught walking the streets of Paris with colorful little fans to stay cool (looking at you, YSL menswear attendees). Instead of braving the rays, spend your days in the crisp air of a gallery, cooling down with these 14 can’t-miss solo shows. Both well-known names like Annette Messager and Tetsuya Ishida, and emerging voices like Regev Haim Pardo and Ernst Yohji Jaeger, are set to make your Parisian summer worth bearing the sun’s rays.

“Then Remembered Again” by Regev Haim Pardo 

Where: Taon
When: Through July 10
Why It’s Worth a Look: From the low-key Brooklyn-based artist and poet comes a minimalist exhibition in a stark, intimate gallery space. Pardo scatters small, ephemeral works around the room, succeeding in making it appear full, and bafflingly empty, at once.
Know Before You Go: Peepholes gaze out into the world beyond the gallery walls, encasing visitors in an eerie mood. Is the artwork in here with us, or out there?

“Paula Rego: Drawing from Life”

Where: Galerie Lelong
When: Through July 11
Why It’s Worth a Look: Looking back to an intense three-year period of the late artist’s life, this exhibit brings together drawings and lithography produced immediately after her 70th birthday. Her fascination with fantasy and legends continues to be evident, even as she slips into darker territory with older age. Warning: These fairytales might not be for kids.
Know Before You Go: One recurring reference is the work of playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh. In particular, the artist pulls from his play The Pillowman and a series of unpublished short stories he gifted to her personally.

“Ausstellung Geht Hinter Ihnen Weiter [Exhibition Continues Behind You]” by Philipp Timischl

Where: Sultana
When: Through July 17
Why It’s Worth a Look: Timischl turns the focus of his exhibition off of himself as the artist, and more explicitly on “you,” the viewer. Welcoming guests into the showing of abstract, floor-based paintings and sculptures are eight paintings stating the exhibition’s name in various languages: “The exhibition continues behind you.” Where it ends, or leads you, is less clear.
Know Before You Go: Timischl proposes that language is a funny, fickle thing: Oftentimes throughout the exhibit, French, German, and English translations of phrases are intentionally off or fully mistranslated.

“Saytu” by Alioune Diagne 

Where: Templon
When: Through July 18
Why It’s Worth a Look: With the exhibition’s title meaning “searching, examining, and preserving what is most precious,” in Wolof, the Franco-Senegalese painter recounts two years of research into the preservation and transformation of Senegal’s cultural heritage through new, Pointalist-esque works.
Know Before You Go: Diagne’s two-year exploration began with a mere two-month stay in the Etiolo, Bassari territory. From there, he went on to Ethiwar, Ibel, Iwol, and Andjel, as well as Madina Baffé and Koumpentoum.

“French Painting” by Michaël Borremans 

Where: David Zwirner
When: Through July 22
Why It’s Worth a Look: The Belgian painter unveils a collection of new paintings at the international gallery’s Paris outpost, marking his first solo show in France in 20 years. A longtime staple at David Zwirner, Borremans brings his signature humor to this ironic homage to French pictorial traditionalism.
Know Before You Go: It seems liminality is in more than just the Backrooms—Borremans’s paintings subvert familiar imagery, bringing the viewer to an unusual space outside of time, somewhere between 2026 and our conception of yore. 

“Jacqueline de Jong: Before Language”

Where: Galerie Allen
When: Through July 25
Why It’s Worth a Look: Galerie Allen’s posthumous retrospective centers on 1960 to 1964, a moment of great forward motion in de Jong’s career, marked by her return to the Netherlands after a period of war-induced exile. Her avant-garde style, characterized by a vibrant, almost violent use of color and gesture, helped set the tone for the Situationist movement in Europe.
Know Before You Go: This body of work coincided with de Jong’s founding of the periodical The Situationist Times. In classic fashion, after being excluded from other, male-dominated publications, the artist muscled ahead. 

“Calamondin” by Ernst Yohji Jaeger

Where: Crèvecoeur
When: Through July 25
Why It’s Worth a Look: This exhibition is a peek inside the mind of one of Vienna’s up-and-coming oil painters. Mythical, surreal, and intimate, Jaeger’s exhibition sets itself apart with a host of new work derived from visions of Japan, Diamonds and Rust by Joan Baez, Moby Dick, and more.
Know Before You Go: Before you go filing Jaeger away as another dreamscape painter, his gallerist, Alix Dionot-Morani, notes, “The symbolic things that he talks about, they aren’t abstract. He lives them. He tells me about a meditation session in Japan … he has a vision: he transforms into a phoenix.” The challenge, at this showing, is to tell where reality ends and the artist’s imagination begins. 

“Transmission | نشریات” by Suleman Aqeel Khilji

Where: White Cube
When: Through July 25
Why It’s Worth a Look: Painted in layers, Khilji’s quiet portraits are an excavation of “remembrances” seeped into linen, book covers, and even cigarette boxes. Drawing from photographs of family and friends, as well as 1980s film stills, the London-based painter mediates on memory and the afterlife.
Know Before You Go: Khiji, born in Quetta, uses similar palettes and techniques as millenia-old preserved cave paintings from the region—another ode to our past lives.

“Unplugged” by Nicolas Ceccaldi

Where: Édouard Montassut
When: Through July 25
Why It’s Worth a Look: We’re all trying to lower our screen time, but Ceccaldi knows a hack most don’t: replace your computer screens with drawings, of course. The Canadian artist’s exhibition features “permanent screensavers” of hand-drawn charcoal eyes peering out from inside the computer at the viewer—a constant presence of surveillance.
Know Before You Go: The exhibition, and its title, were inspired by MTV’s Unplugged programming, where rock bands performed acoustic versions of their songs for a more “intimate” feeling, not unlike the hand-crafted simplicity of a charcoal drawing.

“Roni Horn”

Where: Good Books
When: Through July 31
Why It’s Worth a Look: The independent bookshop and gallery space hosts a significant collection of Horn’s books, ephemera, and multiples, from her photo series of Isabelle Huppert to her ceramics. Through nearly 60 pieces, the New York-born minimalist interrogates androgyny using her decades-long fascination with water.
Know Before You Go: The theme was no mere coincidence. Ideas of fluidity, androgyny, and metamorphosis run through the bookshop’s selection of publications, now suffused with the artist’s commentary.

“Tetsuya Ishida”

Where: Gagosian
When: Through July 31
Why It’s Worth a Look: The late Japanese painter’s first solo exhibition in France brings together a seemingly predictive body of work that skewers hyper-corporate, consumption-fueled times before they truly hit their stride. In the work, young subjects are rendered as mechanical chimeras in a faded, surrealist landscape.
Know Before You Go: Ishida created the majority of his work in the ’90s—also referred to as Japan’s recession-laden “lost decade.” Although his work spans only a short window, it remains a time capsule for societal attitudes during the longstanding economic displacement of the nation.

“Purple Flopper” by Eddie Martinez 

Where: Galerie Max Hetzler
When: Through Aug. 1
Why It’s Worth a Look: This showing is a collaboration: between the artist and… himself. Reflecting on and building upon past works, the Brooklyn-based painter crafts a conversation with his own oeuvre. Never-before-seen paintings and sculptures brim with the spontaneity he does best across the “Whiteout” and “Blackout” series, and a number of stand-alone works.
Know Before You Go: A newly unveiled work in the exhibition, Buflys, a saturated composition resembling a butterfly, dips into the next generation and was inspired by his son’s mispronunciation of the word.

“Une Hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps” and “Histoires des oreillers” by Annette Messager 

Where: Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature and Marian Goodman
When: Through Sept. 20 at Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature and Sept. 26 at Marian Goodman
Why It’s Worth a Look: Leading French visual and sculptural artist Messager has not one, but two retrospectives dedicated to both her beloved and rarely shown works. The two exhibits, down the street from one another, celebrate the animality of the Paris-based artist’s work, and her unconventional use of everyday objects to create stuffed or textile-based sculptural pieces. Over 80 works span the two locales.
Know Before You Go: Messager and curator Colin Lemoine will sign copies of the exhibition’s catalogue on Sept. 3 at Marian Goodman.

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