Art Basel has announced that Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata will take over the Grand Palais during Art Basel Paris 2026 under a carte blanche commission from Maison Ruinart. The project, presented as "Conversations with Nature 2026," invites visitors to follow Kawamata's creative process through preparatory drawings and models, before encountering the resulting work at the Grand Palais from 23 to 25 October.

Kawamata was given complete freedom to explore the relationship between nature and craftsmanship, a theme the champagne house frames as a meeting of the two disciplines. Best known for sprawling wooden constructions that reshape public space — from docksides to museum atriums — the artist brings a practice rooted in material experimentation and collective building to one of Paris's most visible exhibition venues.

The commission is distinct from Kawamata's earlier Ruinart collaboration at Frieze London, where he designed the Art Bar. This time the Paris presentation centres on his working method itself: the sketches, studies and models that precede the final intervention, giving audiences a view of the creative process behind the project as well as the finished work. The invitation to "discover the creative process" runs through the announcement, positioning the Grand Palais as both studio and stage for the three-day encounter.

The announcement, made through Art Basel's own channels ahead of the fair, adds a high-profile cultural partner project to the Paris edition's off-site programme. With the fair concentrating the art world's attention on the French capital that week, the Grand Palais installation lands at the centre of the autumn calendar. Ruinart's patronage frames the commission within the champagne house's long-running programme of artistic collaborations, this time articulated through Kawamata's language of nature and craftsmanship rather than a finished decorative object.