Last week in Paris, 7 Rue Froissart was presented in the style of a traditional art fair, with white walls and a traditional hang. All this, however, was conceptual camouflage. Though on the surface it may have looked conventional, 7 Rue Froissart is anything but. The fair’s very model disrupts the traditional economics of artistic access, with a strong emphasis on relationship-building as cultural praxis.
Brigitte Mulholland opened up her eponymous gallery in Paris just last year, and this year, she has started an art fair of her own. It was relationships that Mulholland had built over the last twenty-odd years in the art world that then rallied around her when the time came to propose an alternative art fair model. Rob Dimin (DIMIN) and Mulholland know each other from New York, so, as Dimin tells it, “When Brigitte decided to do this, it was really a no-brainer for me to want to be involved.” Ingrid Lundgren (Slip House) had already known Mulholland for years when in 2023 they worked on a pop-up exhibition in Paris, Ravens and Crows, together—it was on that same trip that Mulholland found the space that would become her gallery. Mulholland’s long-cultivated network drew in local performance artists such as Mariana Hahn and Kahlos Éphémère, as well as exhibitors from London, New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles. Therefore, 7 Rue Froissart, from its inception, was defined not by its location but instead by its community mandate.
...
A smaller fair meant financial risk was replaced by a shared vision. Exhibitors all paid the same fee, booth size is roughly equal, and there’s even a shared sculpture space downstairs, which the galleries curated collaboratively. For galleries like HESSE FLATOW, it was an opportunity to gain international visibility and create relationships with less risk. Larger art fairs often come with prohibitive costs charged to galleries, where everything from an extra spotlight to an outlet is charged at a premium; galleries are nickel-and-dimed and often left feeling that they are fending for themselves. Francesa Pessarelli, Associate Director at HESSE FLATOW, says, “I like this. This new model excites me. Of course, we still want to do larger fairs, but everything is getting reconsidered in a time like this. When there’s an option to do something that yields similar or better results and feels a lot better and costs a lot less, I’m all for that.”
...
Radical accessibility is 7 Rue Froissart’s central artistic thesis. “There’s a bit of an anarchic undercurrent,” says Maxwell. “There’s a really cool kind of art school vibe. We’re all showing the work of artists we love.”
7 Rue Froissart was on view from October 20th to October 25th, 2025.