Art, Commerce & Football – A Week in Paris
Celebrating life in Paris, Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true and beautiful – forever!
🪨 Final week to catch ‘Guest House’, the Paris takeover by Milan-based art-world internet phenomenon The Pink Lemonade at Item Idem. Founded by Italian artist Francesco Vullo, the project began as an Instagram art page before morphing into a kind of virtual museum gift shop for the online art crowd. Bringing its digital universe into physical space for the first time in France, the exhibition mixes all sorts of collectible oddities by artists including Corrina Goutos, Julia Obermaier and Andrew Orloski, alongside pieces by our Parisian friends We Do Not Work Alone and of course, the inspired host Item Idem.
🌚 After Los Angeles, New York, Shanghai and London, the sprawling exhibition Beyond the Streets arrives at La Villette’s Grande Halle tomorrow, tracing how graffiti moved from subway cars to museums while reshaping cities, language, music and global visual culture along the way. The Paris edition places special focus on the city’s own graffiti history, with for example FUTURA 2000 and André, while a gift shop conceived with our very own Sarah Andelman offers special editions and collabs throughout the run.
🎮 From 8-bit bleeps to full symphonic scores, a new exhibition Video Games & Music at the Philharmonie de Paris explores how video game music evolved into one of the defining soundtracks of contemporary life. Designed like an open-world game, the exhibition invites visitors to move freely through immersive installations, playable consoles, cult soundtracks, instruments, archives and around twenty games tracing the history of the genre, from Pong onwards.
(For French-speakers, you can watch this intro by the exhibition commissioners.)
🎈 Already all over Instagram despite not officially opening until 6 June, JR’s La Caverne du Pont Neuf reimagines Paris’s oldest bridge as a cave that pays tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s magnificent 1985 project The Pont Neuf Wrapped (which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025). Free and open to all 24/7, the inflatable work transforms the bridge into a free public art work, visible from multiple vantage points. Two spaces selling merch are already open: at La Samaritaine’s Loulou, and Merci / Le Vieux Campeur.
🏆And finally, on Saturday, it’s the Champions League final! Arsenal face Paris Saint-Germain at the Puskás Aréna in Budapest, with PSG arrive as reigning champions, chasing back-to-back titles after a dramatic semi-final win over Bayern Munich, while Arsenal return to Europe’s biggest stage for the first time in 20 years. Paris is set to erupt, with fans across the city preparing for a huge night.
See you there!
Kate
[ BOOK RELEASE ] The Ofr. Paris Cookbook, a collab between Mkrs. and my friends at 0fr., celebrates the joy, ritual and radical hospitality of the Parisian table.
👉🏽 Please join us at the launch on Thu 18 June at Shakespeare & Company (6:30-8:30pm).
Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !
On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!
On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).
👉🏽 After years exploring the Puces de Saint-Ouen and researching for my book ‘The Paris Flea Market’, I now share that insider knowledge through bespoke buying and research tours – for collectors, decorators, architects, or anyone who wants to explore the markets with a deeper eye. Hit me up!