Art Basel returned to Paris in 2024, hosted for the first time at the iconic Grand Palais following years of extensive renovation. This historic venue, with its stunning Belle Époque architecture, set the stage for a remarkable showcase of galleries from around the world. Here, we present 8 artists who captivated the eye of Contemporary Lynx’s editor-in-chief- Sylwia Krason. Their diverse practices left a lasting impression, standing out in a fair brimming with exceptional talent, and embodying both the spirit of Art Basel and the vibrant energy of Paris.
Adriana Popescu
Adriana Popescu (1954–2007) was a Romanian artist known for her innovative glass art, creating surreal, phantasmic forms that transport viewers into an imaginative, mystical universe. Born in Craiova and later based in Cluj, she studied drawing, sculpture, and painting but ultimately chose glass as her primary medium. Popescu’s work blends light, transparency, and texture, evoking dreamlike worlds inhabited by underwater creatures, prehistoric flora, and fantastical objects. Her art merges materials such as glass, wood, and metal into delicate, alchemical installations, with pieces like Altoi (2000) exploring themes of fusion and transformation. Her installations, often adaptable in size, emphasize organic growth and evolving nature, and her creative process embraced the battle with materials to convey ideas beyond words. Popescu’s work continues to captivate audiences with its otherworldly beauty and conceptual depth.
Jan Eustachy Wolski
Jan Eustachy Wolski (b. 1997, Cracow, Poland) is a painter known for his unique approach to temporality and narrative, portraying dystopian realms where abstract and figurative elements converge. Drawing inspiration from early modern aesthetics and epic historical compositions, Wolski crafts his works in series, using each painting as a “chapter” that contributes to a larger, abstract narrative. His recent projects explore fractured timelines and distorted realities, addressing themes of power, identity, and the impacts of technological surveillance on society.
Educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Wolski has held exhibitions across Europe. His large-scale work Pelexiton (Excerpts 1 to 6) was presented by Piktogram at Art Basel Paris in 2024. His work is marked by monumental, filmic sequences that transition between realism and abstraction, evoking the fragmented, yet interconnected, nature of contemporary existence. By situating his work within this grand, cinematic format, Wolski not only captures a world on the edge of collapse but also challenges the viewer to consider how fragmented perceptions shape our understanding of contemporary life. The scale and detail in Pelexiton make it one of Wolski’s most ambitious works to date, highlighting his evolving style and commitment to visually narrating complex, multi-layered realities.
Justin Fitzpatrick
Justin Fitzpatrick, (b. 1985) based in Montargis, is a British artist whose work investigates conceptual metaphors through painting, exploring how these metaphors structure our perception of the world. His improvisational approach transforms metaphor into a visual and performative act, highlighting the fluid transitions the mind makes when drawing parallels between seemingly unrelated subjects. Fitzpatrick often incorporates text or text-like forms into his paintings, playing with the boundaries where language and the body merge, hovering between legibility and sensation. His practice centers on the mechanics of meaning-making, turning painting into a tool for metonymic growth and world-building.
At Art Basel 2024, Fitzpatrick presented several notable works, including Vitreous Humorists (2024), an oil painting on linen framed in oak that explores the slippery nature of metaphor and visual narrative. His piece Happy Birthday (David Hockney Moisturising in LA) (2024) similarly uses oil on linen, drawing on personal and cultural references to create layered, imaginative scenes. Additionally, Endocrine Table 1 (2024) expands his material exploration, using beechwood, pine, iron, and other materials to craft a sculptural installation that emphasises his interest in the body and its extensions into space. These works exemplify his ongoing exploration of how objects, bodies, and narratives can be constructed and deconstructed through painting and sculpture.
Kathleen Ryan
Kathleen Ryan, born in 1984 in Santa Monica, California, is a sculptor whose work reimagines everyday objects on a grand scale, turning them into meditations on consumerism, desire, and the fine line between kitsch and class. Her pieces often juxtapose materials in unexpected ways—like sensual grapes crafted from heavy concrete or mold made from semiprecious gemstones—drawing from the tradition of Dutch Vanitas paintings to create playful yet profound allegories of decadence, sexuality, and the fleeting nature of life. Ryan’s sculptures transform mundane objects into intricate, large-scale works that challenge perceptions of value and beauty.
She has had solo exhibitions at renowned institutions like the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and François Ghebaly, and her work is part of prestigious collections, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Ryan lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Margo Wołowiec
Margo Wolowiec (b. 1985, Detroit, MI) is a Detroit-based artist whose work bridges traditional textile techniques and digital imagery. Using hand-dyeing and weaving, she translates pixelated, glitch-like images sourced from social media and internet platforms into intricate fiber art. Her pieces echo the fragmented, networked visuals of digital media, creating woven compositions that mimic the layered, often static-like quality of online images.
Wolowiec earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and an MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, in 2013. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows at venues like the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO; Marlborough Contemporary, New York; Library Street Collective, Detroit; Harper’s, New York and East Hampton; and Laura Bartlett Gallery, London. Her work is in the public collections of the Detroit Center for Photography, MI; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MacLean Collection, Libertyville, IL; KADIST, San Francisco, CA; and the San José Museum of Art, CA. She is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.
Marie Claire Missoula Manlanbien
Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien (b. 1990) is a Paris-based artist born to an Ivorian father and a Guadeloupean mother, whose works serve as bridges between cultures, generations, and materials, combining natural and industrial, precious and common elements. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Cergy, she creates poetic, intricate artworks that intertwine sculpture, weaving, and installation to explore themes of identity, femininity, and the body. Her work evokes maps, totems, and relics, incorporating tactile materials like raffia, clay, hair, and metal to engage the senses and evoke a sacred quality. Messouma Manlanbien’s pieces incorporate Akan symbols and circular poetry, reflecting philosophies of unity and shared human experience. Her materials and structures invite viewers to decipher layers of meaning, offering a journey that bridges the earthly and celestial, symbolic of a personal and cultural cosmology rooted in both her West African and Caribbean heritage.
Paulina Ołowska
Paulina Olowska (b. 1976) is a Polish artist whose figurative paintings focus on women in diverse settings, from urban offices to lush jungles, defying art historical norms and rethinking femininity in Eastern and Western cultures. Her unique color and perspective lend her work a surreal, dreamlike quality. Olowska’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, collage, sculpture, video, installation, and performance. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk (MFA), Olowska has exhibited widely, with solo shows at Kunsthalle Basel, Stedelijk Museum, and Kistefos Museum. She has performed at MoMA, Tate Modern, and the Kestner Gesellschaft. She founded Pavilionesque, an arts and theater magazine, and Artist House Kadenówka, an artist residency in Poland. Her work is in the collections of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, MoMA, and the Stedelijk Museum. She lives and works in Rabka Zdroj and Krakow, Poland.
Sophie Thun
Sophie Thun (*1985, lives and works in Vienna) is a contemporary artist whose practice centers on analog photography, exploring its processes, physical spaces, and conditions of creation. Raised in Warsaw, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and later completed her master’s degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Martin Guttmann and Daniel Richter. Thun is currently the interim professor of the photography class at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Thun’s work immerses viewers in a layered, constantly expanding stream of photographic images that reflect her physical presence within the space. She often appears in her images, whether meeting the camera’s gaze, including her equipment, or leaving direct impressions of her body on light-sensitive paper—each technique underscoring her role as both subject and author. Through processes of layering, cutting, splitting, and multiplying, she deconstructs the photographic medium, portraying identity as dynamic and ever-changing.
Her work has received numerous accolades, including the DZ Bank Work Grant (2019/2020) and Austria’s Outstanding Artist Award. Thun’s work resides in prestigious collections, such as Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, the SMART Museum in Chicago, and the Verbund Collection in Vienna.
artists selected by Sylwia Krason – editor-in-chief of Contemporary Lynx Magazine
Contemporary Lynx Magazine is proud media partner of Art Basel Paris 2024.
