The 13th edition of Paréidolie closed in Marseille on Sunday 30 August. Now firmly established on the calendar, the contemporary drawing fair heralds the start of the new art season in a relaxed, summery mood. “It’s one of the few occasions when we see our clients in Bermuda shorts,” joked one dealer, praising the warm southern atmosphere of this friendly, close-knit event. “This is where contemporary drawing enthusiasts come together. It’s a real community,” said Carine Tissot, director of the Parisian fair Drawing Now, whom we met in the aisles.
With just 17 galleries in this year’s edition, Paréidolie has turned its intimate scale into an advantage, while taking its place within the broader, more institutional framework of a drawing season that it initiated and which now spans some 30 venues across Marseille and the surrounding area. The success of this pocket-sized fair also lies in its carefully judged balance of the familiar and the new. Its selection invariably includes a large proportion of returning galleries, creating a reassuring sense of reunion for regular visitors. Yet these loyal exhibitors make a point of bringing an original project to surprise this dedicated audience. Among them, Galerie Laurent Godin, now based in Arles, presented Jacques Bruel’s (1948–2010) layered compositions made from magazine pages, resembling stained glass on glossy paper. Another Paréidolie stalwart, Bernard Jordan, had conceived a stand connecting the work of two emerging artists: Pierre-Guilhem’s Letterist puzzles drawn on wood and Louise Aleksiejew’s intricate graphic compositions. An inveterate collector, Carine Tissot admitted that she had fallen for one of the latter. Returning this year, Galerie Papillon brought two artistic duos into dialogue. Facing VOID’s subliminal images covered in soot, the enigmatic flowing forms of Marseille-based Berdaguer & Péjus captivated the founders of The Drawer, who awarded the duo their eponymous prize “for the poetry and precision of their Martian haikus, and their ability to renew the forms and language of drawing”.
With highly accessible prices starting at €500, as with Frédérique Lucien’s miniature landscapes framed in lead at Backslash, an impulse purchase remains possible. More seasoned collectors, meanwhile, can be tempted by major works. One example was Marseillle (€75,000), a panorama composed of 25 gouaches by Radenko Milak, an established artist to whom Galerie Catherine Koenig, a newcomer to Paréidolie, devoted a solo presentation that attracted the attention of collectors and institutions alike. The colourful compositions of Agnès Bourély, bursting with musical exuberance and priced at up to €18,000, also caught the eye on the stand of MABE, a young Geneva-based gallery taking part in its first fair. Then there was Jacqueline Mesmaeker’s wonderfully mischievous D’Après, …, a series of chalk scribbles drawn over a postcard reproduction of Picasso’s King Kagpha (€15,000).
→ Paréidolie, International Contemporary Drawing Fair, 13th edition, from 28 to 30 August 2026, at Château de Servières, Marseille.
→ Discover our art tour through Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and the surrounding area