Something Else: Mario Schifano and Charles Zana by Place des Victoires — Paris

At 2 rue de la Vrillière, by Place des Victoires in the 1st arrondissement, an eighteenth-century building has just become a gallery and showroom for the Paris architect and designer Charles Zana. It still has its plain architecture, its wooden floors and its decorative trim, and it is in that state — before the renovation he plans for it — that he is using it for a few days of Art Week.

The exhibition is called Something Else, and it pairs Zana’s furniture — armchairs, sofas and a new piece called Victoire — with a group of paintings by Mario Schifano, chosen by the Italian curator Marion Franchetti. Schifano was one of the central figures of postwar Italian art; the works here come mainly from the 1960s and 1970s, the years of his Propaganda canvases, where the logos of Coca-Cola and Esso are pulled apart into flat fields of colour. “I was looking to mix my furniture in that place with an artist,” Zana told WWD. “I had this intuition — I had this feeling — that Schifano would go very well in the place.”

It is a designer’s exhibition rather than a museum’s: flowers, fragments of antiques, scent, music and lighting are all part of the installation, and admission is free. It runs alongside Art Basel Paris, whose fair days at the Grand Palais are 23 to 25 October, and it is one of the reasons the city’s Art Week spills out of the fair and into rooms like this one. After 25 October Zana closes the space for renovation, keeping the floors and the trim.

Practical details

• When: until Sunday 25 October 2026 — Sortiraparis gives the public days as 21 to 25 October, while WWD reports that the show opened on 15 October during Paris Art Week
• Where: 2 rue de la Vrillière, 75001 Paris, by Place des Victoires (metro Bourse, line 3)
• What: Something Else — paintings by Mario Schifano, curated by Marion Franchetti, shown with furniture by Charles Zana
• Admission: free
• Who: Charles Zana, whose studio has been on rue de Seine since 1990

Cultural Heritage Online lists this event for readers in Paris during Art Basel week.