Art Trends That Made Us Feel Some Type of Way at FIAC 2013 in Paris

The Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC) art fair celebrates its 40th anniversary in Paris this week, on the heels of Frieze London, at the same time as Art Toronto, and a little over a month before Art Basel Miami Beach. Taking place at the Grand Palais, it attracts the world's billionaires, galleries, and art-savvy French people alike, who come to see work from 184 galleries from 25 countries.

FIAC is different from other art fairs because it combines modern art, contemporary art, and art by emerging artists under the same roof (in contrast, Frieze separated itself into Frieze and Frieze Masters). It includes additional programming, like the Ouvertures/Openings performances, produced with the Louvre, the In Process young artists project produced by curator Mehdi Brit, Cinéphémère produced by Fondation d'entreprise Ricard, and the Carte Blanche artist film commissions at the Silencio.

FIAC is very cool and accessible in the setting of the majestic Grand Palais, and at the same time, there are very noticeable trends. Sometimes, there's nothing wrong with approaching art by how it makes you feel. Put the two together, and here are Art Trends That Made Us Feel Some Type of Way at FIAC 2013 in Paris.

Buy tickets to the fair on FIAC.com for Saturday and Sunday if you are in Paris.

RELATED: 10 Things We Learned at Frieze London 2013
RELATED: 10 Artists to Watch From The Other Art Fair 2013

Type of way: Small / Insignificant / Impressed

Being next to a giant sculpture, like a wooden KAWS Companion piece, is the surest way to feel small, but it's also the best way to examine craftsmanship, details, and the various kinds of sculpture being made today.

Ai Weiwei's Iron Tree appears at the entrance as the only piece in neugerriemschneide's booth. From afar, it looks like a tree, but up close, it is arranged with metal pieces. Jos De Gruyter & Harald Thys' De Drie Wijsneuzen dripped water, to the point where if you got too close, you would get a little splashed (see Vine below). Looking at giant versions, a rock, a woman's face, a tree, sunglasses, or a television may have you feeling many types of ways, and amused is allowed to be one of them.

Type of way: Sad / Confused / Unsure if you want a Ferrari anymore

That Ferrari may have you feeling some type of way...until it's crashed and on display as an art piece. Destroying cars in art, or simply just displaying them on the other end of a giant meteorite, is not a new thing. And just so you know, Bertrand Lavier’s Dino (above) sold for $250,000 on the first day of the fair. Matias Fadbakken's Untitled (Car Trunk #5) highlights what the back end of the car looks like, but even in looking so spectacular and balanced on its side, it's a little disheartening.

Why are artists crashing these cars? Ok, maybe the Hyundai had it coming, but why the Ferrari? Such is art and its destructive, unexpected tendencies.

Barbara Kruger's piece gets a mention, because "drive" could mean many things. We also just couldn't look at another crashed car.

Type of way: Happy you no longer own cassettes (they take up wayyy too much space) or tried to turn your vinyl collection into an art piece (it wouldn't have come close to this) / Unsure why Bruno Mars is being played at the fair, even via sculpture

Markus Oehlen's Freefidelity-Camp, in all fairness, was playing the radio, but there were a few WTF faces when Bruno Mars' "Treasure" started playing out of a giant, floating figure. Incorporating music in a more toned down way, Tom Burr's American Master record chamber and Gregor Hildenbrandt's Francesca Neri Kasten create new receptacles for music, which are interesting in a time of digital music, mp3s, and more importantly iPods and iPhones from which to play it all from.

If you need to hear Bruno Mars out of an Oehlen piece, then this Vine is for you:

Type of way: Happy / Euphoric / Finally ready to be a pet owner

Dan Colen's Wile E Coyote and Elmgreen & Dragset's Grown Up Rocking Horse stole the show on the animal art front, and for good reason—they're huge and take familiar, childhood iconography into the contemporary art realm.

Regardless, there are so many animal pieces at FIAC that it becomes hard to keep track of. Who doesn't want to almost accidentally trip on one of Ugo Rondinone's little animal pieces or take a selfie next to Barry Flanagan's flying rabbit? No one.

Type of way: Creeped out / Like the art fair may have just become a horror movie

Bodies cut in parts (in wood, mannequin, or latex form), single legs, and ribs were all at FIAC. It's a standard art trend. It's one thing to see a dismembered animal, but it's another to see a dismembered human. Most of the time it's creepy and strange but still provocative and makes you realize that artists will never run out of ways to reinterpret humanity.

Type of way: What's a book?

Like CDs and cassettes, books feel ever more obsolete in the age of tablets. Mounir Fatmi puts electrical wires in books, Gilles Barbier has plants growing out of books, William Kentridge writes new words on books, Jacque André displays books on a shelf as a piece, and Claire Fontaine pays homage to Marcel Duchamp with a book excerpt. Book art has been around, but these pieces are extra strong in the context of the dying "book" medium as we used to know it.

Type of way: Longing / Emo / Sadboy

Leave it to Tracey Emin to pop in a love note that breaks your heart the moment you see it. Another artist put "All Is Fair in Love" on a wall. Then the Barbara Kruger piece comes in, and it's over. You have to get a €20 champagne just to feel better. It's so expensive that it makes you feel worse.

Type of way: Need a drink ASAP

There were pieces referencing alcohol literally and metaphorically at least every few feet at FIAC. It's impressive that artists have found so many ways to incorporate alcohol and the act of drinking it into their work. By the time you get upstairs or hit booth #100, maybe these pieces are a little reminder of what you should be sipping on next.

Type of way: Unsure of who you even are anymore

Frieze London, and many other fairs, have work so conducive to selfies that it seems planned. The same goes for FIAC, except these reflective works were a little trippier.

Koki Tanaka's Beholding Performer, Performing Beholder is a combined mirror/video installation piece that kind of makes you feel like you're both yourself and the guy in the video. Meanwhile Mona Hatoum's piece reminds you that You are still here, but it's a little more scary than whimsical upon experiencing it. The happy exception might be Michelangelo Pistoletto's Un Palloncino Rosso, where you feel like you can reach in and grab the red balloon...except of course you can't.

Experience LEROY's ripples below, which moves ever so slightly:

Type of way: Unstylish / Unsure how to arrange, understand, or store clothing

Artists often use clothing and fabric to make comments on the body, identity, and history. Pieces like Eva Kotatkova's work at hunt kastner separate the body's limbs and give it extra arms on a mannequin, while Do Ho Suh's Uni-Form/s: Self-Portrait/s: My 39 Years presents an array of striking military uniforms and university ("uni") uniforms next to one another.

Pieces like Peter Land's I'm NOT Here remind us that work using clothing can be humorous. After all, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera have simply hung up a Balenciaga coat and Gabriele Beveridge has squeezed a shirt into a picture frame. Clothing is powerful on display, even off the runway, eliciting feelings from unstylishness to introspection and whether or not you should be more experimental with how you look at or hang your clothes.