Under the vaulted glass-and-steel roof of Carreau du Temple near the Place de la République, Drawing Now assembled 72 galleries presenting works by around 400 artists. This was the eleventh edition of the fair, founded by Christine Phal. In an era where some artists are outsourcing factory productions for monumental works, the intimacy and uniqueness of drawings and works on paper feels deeply singular and gestural.
Lionel Sabatté, showcased at Galerie C from Neuchâtel, Switzerland, won the Prix Drawing Now 2017. His delicate charcoal/acrylic/turmeric abstract drawing evokes a horse-like shape leaping in a landscape.
Here are some highlights of the fair, whose director is Carine Tissot and whose artistic director is Philippe Piguet.
Mounir Fatmi's collaged drawings from his 'Island of Roots' series at Analix Forever feature reproductions of Lewis Wickers Hines photographs of Italian immigrants at Ellis Island, the gateway to New York in the early 1900s. By drawing over the clothing, Fatmi has appropriated the photos and drawn coloured branches around the images, suggestive of the trees of life growing from migration.
At Michel Soskine, the intricate drawings by Daniel Zeller take inspiration from biomorphic and cartographic shapes. “The visual language is borrowed from many places, including satellite photography, electron micrographs, topographic maps, anatomical and schematic diagrams,” Zeller explains.
Party fever unites Thomas Lévy-Lasne's small-scale watercolours at Backslash and Helena Hauss's large-scale, biro-on-paper works at School Gallery. Lévy-Lasne's meticulously detailed watercolours, based on photographs of friends dancing, sold out at his solo show. Meanwhile, Hauss' drawing of a young woman reclining in a bath full of empty Budweiser cans, and cigarette stubs trailing on the tiled floor, is an allegory of debauchery.
The blurry charcoal drawings by Lenny Rébéré at Galerie Isabelle Gounod straddle different moments in time, with over-layerings of figures in spatial environments, like filmic sequences. This sense of narrative characterizes the five-panel drawing on engraved glass, of a woman walking from inside to outside with her son.
The pieces by Claire Morgan, the Northern Irish artist known for her suspended taxidermy sculptures, at Karsten Greve signal a new departure. For the first time, Morgan has added the residues of the taxidermy process into her works on paper. In 'Bleeding' (2017), bird bone fragments are in relief, defining the swarm towards the red-tinted centre between black pylons, evocative of birds dying on motorways.
A political piece is 'El Arte de la Politica', 2010, by Mauro Giaconi at Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain. The Argentine artist has repeated a drawing of a grill over 34 overlapping pages of Ernan de Sandozequi's book. Belonging to the artist's 'Alambrados' (Grill) series, the piece alludes to the mantra of politics and recalls the notion of censorship and freedom of expression.
Lionel Sabatté, showcased at Galerie C from Neuchâtel, Switzerland, won the Prix Drawing Now 2017. His delicate charcoal/acrylic/turmeric abstract drawing evokes a horse-like shape leaping in a landscape.

Lionel Sabatté, Caresse boisée, 2016, Charcoal, acrylic medium and turmeric on paper, 120 x 80 cm © Galerie C, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Mounir Fatmi's collaged drawings from his 'Island of Roots' series at Analix Forever feature reproductions of Lewis Wickers Hines photographs of Italian immigrants at Ellis Island, the gateway to New York in the early 1900s. By drawing over the clothing, Fatmi has appropriated the photos and drawn coloured branches around the images, suggestive of the trees of life growing from migration.

Lenny Rébéré, Untitled 2017, Engraved glass and ink, 54 x 97.5 x 6 cm, Courtesy Galerie Isabelle Gounod, Paris
Party fever unites Thomas Lévy-Lasne's small-scale watercolours at Backslash and Helena Hauss's large-scale, biro-on-paper works at School Gallery. Lévy-Lasne's meticulously detailed watercolours, based on photographs of friends dancing, sold out at his solo show. Meanwhile, Hauss' drawing of a young woman reclining in a bath full of empty Budweiser cans, and cigarette stubs trailing on the tiled floor, is an allegory of debauchery.

Claire Morgan, Bleeding, 2017, Mixed media on paper on canvas, 100 x 100cm, ©Claire Morgan, Courtesy of Galerie Karsten Greve Köln, Paris, St.Moritz

Mauro Giaconi, 'El Arte de la Politica', 2010, From the 'Alambrados' (Grill) series, Pencil on 34 pages of the book 'El arte de la política', 89 x 131cm, Courtesy of Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain, Paris
The pieces by Claire Morgan, the Northern Irish artist known for her suspended taxidermy sculptures, at Karsten Greve signal a new departure. For the first time, Morgan has added the residues of the taxidermy process into her works on paper. In 'Bleeding' (2017), bird bone fragments are in relief, defining the swarm towards the red-tinted centre between black pylons, evocative of birds dying on motorways.
A political piece is 'El Arte de la Politica', 2010, by Mauro Giaconi at Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain. The Argentine artist has repeated a drawing of a grill over 34 overlapping pages of Ernan de Sandozequi's book. Belonging to the artist's 'Alambrados' (Grill) series, the piece alludes to the mantra of politics and recalls the notion of censorship and freedom of expression.


