The 2026 Paris gallery season opens with a programme bringing together major figures in contemporary art, emerging voices and reflections on the very role of galleries. From David Zwirner and the legacy of Yvon Lambert to Annette Messager at Marian Goodman, Jennifer Guidi at Gagosian, Pierre Bellot at Art : Concept, Emma Prempeh at Perrotin and Clément Cogitore at Nathalie Obadia, ART MAG has selected six exhibitions that set the tone for Paris’s new art season.
September occupies a particular place in the contemporary art calendar in Paris.
After the summer break, galleries reopen their doors, unveil new exhibitions and reconnect with artists, collectors, institutions and art-market professionals.
This gallery season begins just a few weeks before the international calendar accelerates with Art Basel Paris, which will once again place the French capital at the centre of the art market in October.
Yet before the fairs and the hundreds of exhibitions that will shape the autumn, September offers another way of looking at Paris’s artistic ecosystem: entering its galleries and observing the choices they make to open their season.
Those choices are never entirely neutral.
They reveal the artists a gallery wants to champion, the new directions it intends to pursue and, sometimes, the way it revisits its own history.
Here are six exhibitions to discover in Parisian galleries in September 2026 — and above all, six ways of understanding what is currently shaping the Paris art scene.
FNAC 2013-0158, Collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques © Nan Goldin / Cnap
David Zwirner and Yvon Lambert: When Galleries Help Write Art History
This is probably one of the most symbolic exhibitions of the Paris gallery season 2026.
From 8 September, David Zwirner presents Au 108 rue Vieille du Temple: A Shared Legacy with Galerie Yvon Lambert at its Paris space.
The address is far from incidental.
In September 1986, Yvon Lambert opened his gallery in this very space, becoming a major figure in the exchanges between the French and American art scenes. Forty years later, David Zwirner, which has occupied the address since 2019, revisits this history.
The exhibition brings together thirty-two international artists connected with Yvon Lambert and/or David Zwirner, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Christian Boltanski, Nan Goldin, Anselm Kiefer, Barbara Kruger, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and Cy Twombly.
But the real interest of the exhibition lies elsewhere.
It raises an essential question:
What role does a gallery play in building an artist’s career and, in turn, in shaping art history?
A gallery does not simply present works. It identifies artists, supports them over time, organises exhibitions, builds relationships with collectors, curators and institutions, and contributes to the recognition of their work.
This is how collections are built over several decades.
Through Yvon Lambert’s history, the exhibition offers a broader reflection on the role galleries play in writing contemporary art history.
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Annette Messager at Marian Goodman: Intimacy as a Territory for Creation
With Histoires des oreillers, on view until 26 September 2026, Marian Goodman Gallery brings together a selection of historical and emblematic works by Annette Messager, some of which are rarely shown to the public. Spanning from 1972 to the present, the presentation highlights several recurring threads in her practice: intimacy, the body, words, romantic imagery and representations of femininity.
Messager transforms the most familiar objects and gestures to expose their ambiguities. In Histoire des oreillers III (1995–2026), the pillow leaves the domestic sphere to evoke sleep, confidences and the presence of an absent body. In Les Amoureux (2016), two embracing couples suspended from a butcher’s hook shift the image of romantic intimacy towards something more unsettling, poised between attachment, fragility and confinement.
This intimate dimension never excludes a critical perspective. As early as Les Qualificatifs donnés aux femmes (1972), Messager used embroidery to expose stereotypes associated with women; almost forty years later, Just Married (2011) ironically confronts a bridal veil with an ordinary broom. Objects, words and materials thus become instruments for questioning assigned roles, desire and relations between the feminine and masculine.
The presentation takes on particular resonance alongside Une Hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps, simultaneously on view at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature until 20 September, where more than eighty works engage with the museum’s collections. While the museum exhibition notably explores animality, Marian Goodman focuses on romantic narratives and intimate confidences: two complementary perspectives on an oeuvre that, for more than fifty years, has transformed everyday life in order to question our representations.
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Photo: Thomas Lannes Courtesy Gagosian
Jennifer Guidi at Gagosian: When Landscape Becomes an Inner Experience
With Waterfall, presented at Gagosian Paris from 3 September to 10 October 2026, Jennifer Guidi continues her exploration of colour and painting, light and states of perception.
In her new works, the American artist once again turns her attention to nature.
Cascades, mountains, colours, sunlight and the movements of the landscape become the starting points for a profoundly sensory experience of painting.
Nature is no longer merely a subject.
The surface itself becomes essential. Repeated circular motifs, sand embedded in the paint and the materiality of colour transform the canvas into an almost meditative space.
These geometric compositions evoke both the capacity of painting to capture a memory and the way landscape, light and colour can act on our emotions and become part of our psychological experience.
For Jennifer Guidi, looking at a landscape is therefore no longer simply about observing it.
It is also about traversing it through light, rhythm and sensation.
On view: Jennifer Guidi, Waterfall, Gagosian, Paris, from 3 September to 10 October 2026.
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Pierre Bellot at Art : Concept: When the Image Emerges After the Painting
With Vallée FM, Pierre Bellot adopts an approach that may seem almost counterintuitive for those looking for a recognisable subject in his paintings.
The artist begins without one.
For Vallée FM, presented at Art : Concept in September 2026, the exhibition starts with a simple idea: painting without trying to produce an image.
Colours, formats, fragments, accidents and repetitions gradually become the starting point.
Certain surfaces appear almost geological, built through successive layers.
It is only after the painting process that forms may evoke landscapes, mountains, architecture or imaginary maps.
The image therefore emerges only after the painting.
This approach makes the exhibition particularly interesting today.
At a time when we are surrounded by instantly produced and endlessly circulated images, Pierre Bellot’s painting questions another temporality: painting as a slow construction, in which the artist cannot entirely anticipate the final result.
The image no longer precedes the painting. It ultimately emerges through the material and the gesture.
On view: Pierre Bellot, Vallée FM, Art : Concept, Paris, September 2026.
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Vue de l’exposition d’Emma Prempeh – The Domain of a stranger
©Photos Claire Dorn / Courtesy of the artist & Perrotin
Emma Prempeh at Perrotin: A New Stage in an International Career
The gallery season can also mark a decisive moment for artists whose careers are still taking shape.
At only thirty years old, British artist Emma Prempeh presents her first solo exhibition at Perrotin Paris.
The exhibition The Domain of the Stranger brings together new works in which memory, identity, temporality and the exploration of territories occupy a central place.
Her work examines how images emerge, disappear or transform as our individual and collective memories evolve.
This exhibition therefore represents a particularly important milestone, as the artist enters a new relationship with an international gallery while continuing to develop a highly personal visual language.
It also illustrates one of the fundamental roles of a gallery: supporting an artist at a moment when their work and career can take on a new public and critical dimension.
For ART MAG, such moments are valuable to observe because they sometimes reveal the trajectories that will shape tomorrow’s contemporary art landscape.
On view: Emma Prempeh, The Domain of the Stranger, Perrotin, Paris, from 5 to 26 September 2026.
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Clément Cogitore at Nathalie Obadia: The Image Beyond Its Boundaries
The sixth exhibition in our selection takes us to Clément Cogitore at Galerie Nathalie Obadia.
A French artist and filmmaker, Clément Cogitore has spent several years exploring the boundaries between cinema, photography, video and contemporary art.
His works examine how images, narratives and rituals are constructed and how they influence our individual and collective representations.
His presence in this selection is important because it reflects another transformation in the way art is perceived today: the increasingly porous boundaries between artistic disciplines.
Contemporary art is no longer defined solely by a medium but by an artist’s ability to activate several visual languages at once.
Clément Cogitore’s work therefore continues a reflection particularly relevant to the contemporary art world: how can we think about images when they constantly circulate between different media?
On view: Clément Cogitore, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, from September 2026.
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What Does the Paris Gallery Season 2026 Reveal?
Looking at these six exhibitions together reveals several significant trends.
The first concerns awareness of generations.
The same city can host major historical figures, artists from the post-war period, internationally recognised artists and a new generation, such as Emma Prempeh, represented here by Perrotin.
This coexistence of generations is one of the strengths of the Parisian art scene.
The second concerns the role of galleries themselves.
The David Zwirner/Yvon Lambert exhibition demonstrates that a gallery does not merely present and sell works. It can also preserve archives, reactivate an artistic history and transmit the memory of a particular moment.
Finally, the third concerns the internationalisation of Paris.
The presence of major international galleries, the circulation of artists between several countries and the proximity of Art Basel Paris all contribute to positioning the French capital within an increasingly open artistic and economic ecosystem.
Why Does Paris Continue to Attract the Art Market?
The dynamism of Parisian galleries should also be considered in the context of the French art market’s growing importance.
In 2025, France accounted for around 8% of the global art market, with sales of approximately $4.5 billion, an increase of 9% over the previous year.
It therefore strengthened its position as the leading art market within the European Union.
This development is not solely due to Paris’s major international fairs.
It also depends on a dense network of galleries, auction houses, museums, foundations, fairs and collectors that contribute to the vitality of the market throughout the year.
The gallery season in September is one of the most visible manifestations of this vitality.
Before Art Basel Paris, Rediscovering the Time of Galleries
In just a few weeks, the art market will accelerate.
Art Basel Paris will bring together galleries, collectors, institutions and art-market professionals from around the world for several days in the French capital.
But September offers a different experience.
It is a period when many galleries and artists can still be discovered away from the intensity of a major international fair.
In a gallery, the exhibition can take the time to unfold.
A visitor can spend more time with a work.
An artist can offer a more complete body of work.
A gallery can construct a more ambitious curatorial narrative.
At a time when the economic model of major fairs is increasingly questioned by certain galleries, this dimension deserves particular attention.
The gallery remains one of the fundamental places where the relationship between an artist, an artwork and an audience is built.
A Gallery Season That Reasserts the Essential Role of Galleries
Just a few weeks before Art Basel Paris, this new season is a reminder that the vitality of the Paris art scene cannot be measured solely by the strength of its major international events. It is also built throughout the year inside galleries, through direct encounters between artists, artworks and audiences.
From Yvon Lambert’s legacy to a new generation represented by Emma Prempeh, these six exhibitions portray a Paris in which art history, emerging creation and the art market continue to intersect.
FAQ – Paris Gallery Season 2026
Among the key exhibitions of the Paris gallery season are David Zwirner’s Au 108 rue Vieille du Temple: A Shared Legacy with Galerie Yvon Lambert, Annette Messager’s Histoires des oreillers at Marian Goodman, Jennifer Guidi’s Waterfall at Gagosian, Pierre Bellot’s Vallée FM at Art : Concept, Emma Prempeh’s The Domain of the Stranger at Perrotin, and Clément Cogitore’s Ferdinandea at Galerie Nathalie Obadia.
September marks the reopening of galleries after the summer break and the launch of their new exhibition programmes. It is also a strategic moment in the art calendar, just a few weeks before Art Basel Paris brings collectors, galleries and art professionals from around the world to the French capital.
This selection includes David Zwirner, Marian Goodman, Gagosian, Art : Concept, Perrotin and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, offering a broad perspective on both established and emerging contemporary art.
Annette Messager’s Histoires des oreillers is on view at Marian Goodman Gallery, 79 rue du Temple, until 26 September 2026. At the same time, the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature is presenting Une Hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps, bringing together more than eighty of her works.
The September gallery season offers a more intimate way to experience contemporary art before the intensity of Art Basel Paris. Visitors can discover complete exhibitions, spend more time with individual works and observe the artistic choices galleries are making at the beginning of the season.