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Art Basel: 16-18 June 2023
Hold the mayo: Basel is ready to get edgy Arts programme in a former condiment factory kicks off major regeneration project
BASEL SOCIAL CLUB: DAVID OWENS. BANKSY: JEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES. INSIDE OUT: PHOTO: JOSHUA GEYER; WWW.INSIDEOUTPROJECT.NET
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hile the besuited Pipilotti Rist and Gallery Knoell from power players Basel presenting a large painting by A.R. in town for Art Penck. Alongside the art is a film and Basel still vie to performance programme, plus pop-up hold court at the restaurants, bars and a nightclub room. five-star Hotel Les Trois Rois, across the river a cooler crowd is gathering at Factory setting the Basel Social Club (BSC)—a The 12,000 sq. m factory that BSC free-to-enter, roving events temporarily occupies was, and commercial arts until recently, owned by organisation that Nestlé Switzerland. Last has set up shop for December, 75% of the this week in a vast site was purchased former mayonnaise by KULTQuartier factory, a 20-minute Immobilien—a walk north of company established the Messeplatz. in Basel last year by BSC was launched the Swiss siblings last year by a group of Corinne, Dominik gallerists, artists and and Gabriel Eckenstein. curators, who staged a They have since handed programme in a 1930s over the building rights villa in the city’s south, to The conversion of the 12,000 to the property developer coincide with Art Basel. sq. m former Nestlé factory Franck Areal; much of For its second iteration, the main building will be will take up to nine years operations have scaled up turned into a permanent considerably: across five floors of caverncultural venue focused on contemporary ous rooms with rough concrete walls, dance and the performing arts. more than 100 commercial galleries and “Basel lacks cutting-edge cultural project spaces are showing works, almost venues for less traditional art forms— all for sale. These vary wildly in size and especially ones that can attract young price, including the mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth bringing a video installation by CONTINUED ON PAGE 25
The Inside Out Photo-booth van in Tucson, USA; since 2011 the project has involved more than half a million people around the world
JR project glues communities together in Geneva Portraits of refugees, asylum seekers and Swiss locals will be pasted onto the façade of a Geneva building next week as part of the latest incarnation of the French artist JR’s participatory Inside Out project. The giant mural will be created and installed on World Refugee Day (20 June) in partnership with Switzerland for UNHCR, the Swiss foundation of the UN Refugee Agency, and Hospice général, the public welfare body in the canton of Geneva. Founded by JR in 2011, Inside Out “helps individuals and communities to make a statement by displaying large-scale black-and-white portraits in public spaces”. More than half a million people across 150
countries have taken part in the projects, which are now created independently from JR. Inside Out’s photo-booth van will be stationed at Geneva’s Centre d’hébergement collectif Rigot, a facility for asylum-seekers and refugees, with UNHCR mediators on site to explain the initiative to residents. “This action will underline the message of inclusion reflected in this year’s World Refugee Day theme of ‘hope away from home: a world where refugees are always included’,” Switzerland for UNHCR says in a statement. “The portraits of host and refugee communities will be intertwined on the façade, making it impossible for the public to distinguish who is who.”
JR currently has a solo exhibition, Women, at Pace Gallery in Geneva (until 18 July). Meanwhile, his first solo show in Italy, Déplacé.e.s, at the Gallerie d’Italia in Turin (until 16 July), presents installations co-created with communities in refugee settlements in Rwanda, Mauritania, Colombia, Ukraine and Greece. UNHCR this week published its Global Trends report for 2022, revealing the highest number of forcibly displaced people ever recorded. The total has reached around 110 million, up 20 million in the past two years, mostly due to the war in Ukraine and crises in Afghanistan and Sudan. Aimee Dawson
First official Banksy show in over a decade will be open all night at weekends IN KEEPING WITH HIS WORKS SUDDENLY APPEARING IN PUBLIC SPACES, the UK street artist Banksy announced just after midnight on Thursday that his first official exhibition in 14 years will open this weekend in Glasgow, Scotland. The show at the Gallery of Modern Art is called Cut & Run: 25 Years Card Labour (18 June-28 August) and will span the artist’s career, from his earliest works made in the late 1980s up to recent pieces made this year. Cut & Run will focus on the stencils Banksy uses to create his works, which
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are often spray painted on walls around the world, including damaged buildings in Ukraine, a car park in Los Angeles, the exterior of an old prison in Reading, the separating wall in Bethlehem and inside a London Tube train. The exhibition will also feature the Union Flag stab vest that the artist made for the pop star Stormzy and paintings such as Jean-Michel Basquiat being stopped and searched (2017), a version of which was painted on a wall outside a Basquiat exhibition at London’s Barbican Gallery in 2017. Banksy says in a statement: “I’ve kept
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Claire Oswalt, Pools of Perrier (detail), BROADWAY
The exhibition at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art will span Banksy’s entire career from the late 1980s
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these stencils hidden away for years, mindful they could be used as evidence in a charge of criminal damage. But that moment seems to have passed, so now I’m exhibiting them in a gallery as works of art. I’m not sure which is the greater crime.” One of the highlights of the show will be a model showing how Banksy embedded a shredder into the frame of one of his works that infamously selfdestructed during an auction at Sotheby’s London in 2018. In addition, the “artist’s actual toilet” will be on display,
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according to the press release. The elusive artist, whose identity is still unknown, announced the exhibition news on his Instagram page. Although there have been several Banksy exhibitions over the past decade, this will be the first officially sanctioned one since his solo show, Banksy versus Bristol Museum, in 2009. He says: “While the unauthorised Banksy shows might look like sweepings from my studio floor, Cut & Run really is the actual sweepings from my studio floor.” José da Silva
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
NEWS Europe
Top five from Kabinett’s debut
THE ART NEWSPAPER LAUNCHES TURKISH EDITION
Genesis Belanger Perrotin
Working in a multitude of materials including porcelain, wool, steel and plywood, Genesis Belanger is showing six pieces with Perrotin ($75,000-$110,000) as part of an installation called One Bite of the Ripest Fruit. Several of the sculptures appear almost like paintings when viewed from straight on, “as if Claes Oldenburg and Giorgio Morandi had a baby”, says Valentine Blondel, the gallery’s senior director. Like fellow US artist Jeff Koons, Belanger’s background is in advertising, and her works are every bit as seductive.
Anri Sala Esther Schipper
It is not common to see so many works from Ari Sala’s Untitled (map/species) (2018-22) in one place. In these diptychs—eight of which are presented by Esther Schipper (€35,000 each)—Sala reworks maps of countries and geopolitical territories, skewing representations of land masses so that they fit within the boundaries of the found etchings of the biological species that they are exhibited alongside. In doing so, Sala hopes to convey how classification and ordering often went hand-in-hand with colonisation, as well as allowing viewers to draw more poetic parallels between the fauna and geographies represented.
David Byrd Anton Kern
The late painter David Byrd is given the spotlight after a life spent in relative obscurity. Although he is not strictly considered an outsider artist because he received formal training, his work was not publicly exhibited until just a few years before his death in 2013. Having struggled to find a stable career as an artist, Byrd worked for 30 years in the psychiatric ward of a hospital, which inspired his work. The group of paintings from the late 2000s, brought by Anton Kern gallery, includes scenes set in a hospital, and bears stylistic influences from Cubism, American Realism and Regionalism ($35,000-$70,000).
When Petrit Halilaj was just 13, the artist and his family fled their home in war-torn Kosovo, spending more than a year in a refugee camp in Albania. There, Halilaj began to draw images of violence—but also exotic birds and doves. In one sketch, he depicted himself as a bird flying away over the horizon. Representing migration as well as freedom, feathered creatures have been a mainstay of Halilaj’s practice ever since. At Art Basel, Kurimanzutto is showing sculptures created from brass and natural feathers from birds including the ostrich and silver pheasant (€25,000-€45,000).
The galleries Franco Noero and Meyer Riegger have shown at neighbouring stands at Art Basel for years, and now remove a separating wall to present together new works by the artist Henrik Hakansson. At its centre is a large mobile sculpture (€90,000)—a nod to Alexander Calder—which is made from stuffed starlings hanging on iron rods. Hakansson’s preoccupation with the natural world is further demonstrated by six abstract paintings from 2020 (€14,000 each), which incorporate “traces of insects” in their materials, as well as sugar, yeast and fruits.
Monet painting attacked with red paint and glue in Stockholm is undamaged, museum says ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS ATTACKED A PAINTING BY CLAUDE MONET WITH RED PAINT AND GLUE at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm on Wednesday. The painting, Le jardin de l’artiste à Giverny (1900), is unharmed and the activists were arrested, the museum says in a statement. The painting was on loan from the Musée d’Orsay for an exhibition at the Nationalmuseum called The Garden—Six Centuries of Art and Nature.
“In dialogue with the lender, we’re now looking into the possibilities of reinstalling the artwork in the exhibition,” says Hanna Tottmar, the museum’s head of press. “We distance ourselves from actions where art or cultural heritage are put at risk of damage,” says Per Hedström, the acting director general of the Nationalmuseum. “Cultural heritage has great symbolic value and it is unacceptable to attack or destroy
NEW PRIZE FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS ART
Petrit Halilaj Kurimanzutto
Henrik Hakansson Franco Noero and Meyer Riegger
Two activists were arrested after smearing red paint on the protective glass
The Art Newspaper is expanding its international network with the launch of a Turkish edition in September. The new publication is owned by Ali Güreli, the founder of Contemporary Istanbul, the leading art fair in the region. He says: “We are spearheading a new era in Turkish art publishing and cultural discourse.” Inna Bazhenova, the publisher of The Art Newspaper group, says: “The creation of The Art Newspaper Türkiye is an absolutely natural phenomenon. Modern Turkey is becoming one of the world leaders in the art process, and an increased interest in art is always associated with the search for information. The Art Newspaper exists to ensure that people have enough information about art.” The Art Newspaper
it, for any purpose whatsoever.” A group called Aterstall Vatmarker (Restore Wetlands) disseminated a video of the incident via Twitter, showing two women smearing red paint on the protective glass covering the painting with one hand, while gluing their other hand to the glass. The attack is the latest in a series of similar art stunts by climate activists, who have flung or smeared substances including tomato soup, mashed potatoes, paint, glue, cake and a black oily liquid at paintings by artists including Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Vermeer and Gustav Klimt. Catherine Hickley
Guerlain, the French perfumery and luxury beauty brand, has teamed up with Lee Ufan Arles to create a new award, the Art & Environment Prize, which will be given “annually to an artist whose work focuses on the fruitful and multi-faceted relationship between artistic creation and the environment”, according to a project statement. The winner will receive a twomonth residency and a solo exhibition at Lee Ufan Arles, the permanent exhibition centre for the South Korean artist’s works in the south of France. The open call for applications launches on 30 June; the prize winner will be announced at the Paris+ par Art Basel fair in October. Gareth Harris
BASEL CURATOR HEADS TO ART WEEK TOKYO The Basel-based curator Chus Martínez will be curating Art Week Tokyo’s acclaimed video programme, following on from Adam Szymczyk’s inaugural turn last year. Martínez is currently the head of the Institute Art Gender Nature at FHNW Academy of Arts and Design, Basel, and curator-at-large of the Vuslat Foundation, Istanbul. For the third consecutive year, Art Week Tokyo (2-5 November, with VIP events kicking off from 31 October) will be collaborating with Art Basel. This year’s edition will feature 39 galleries and 11 institutions, with extended programming as well as widening regional and international networks. This year sees the launch of a new curated sales platform, AWT Focus, overseen by Kenjiro Hosaka, the director of the Shiga Museum of Art, Otsu. Alison Cole
Correction In the Day 3 edition of the Art Basel dailies we stated an incorrect opening date for the opening of Can Garita gallery in Ibiza. It will open with a Grason Ratowsky exhibition on 10 July.
KABINETT: DAVID OWENS. MONET ATTACK: © ÅTERSTÄLL VÅTMARKER/TWITTER.
After launching at Art Basel in Miami Beach and later in Hong Kong, Kabinett— an initiative that sees select galleries stage small thematic presentations in their stands—has arrived at Art Basel’s flagship Swiss fair. “Exhibitors typically use our fair to show the full breadth of their programme, so we are inviting them to focus on one artist or theme,” says Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s director of fairs and exhibition programmes, of the “stand-within-a-stand” concept. With 14 galleries participating this year, a number of the presentations have been created especially for Art Basel, while others focus on historical works by lesserknown artists from the gallery’s programme, helping to “further diversify the offerings of the fair”, De Bellis adds. Here’s our pick of five mini-presentations. Kabir Jhala and Anny Shaw
News in brief
Louise Bourgeois, Woman in the Shape of a Shuttle, 1947 – 1949, bronze, painted white, and stainless steel, ed. of 6, 166.4 × 30.5 × 30.5 cm / 65 1/2 × 12 × 12 in © The Easton Foundation/2023, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: Christopher Burke
BOURGEOIS NEWMAN ROTHKO
THE GOD THAT FAILED
9 JUNE – 16 SEPTEMBER BAHNHOFSTRASSE, ZURICH
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
DIARY Basel
As protests swept across Swiss cities, some Basel visitors struggled to separate artists from activists Parties around town were disrupted earlier this week when a protest march made art-world luminaries put down their champagne glasses and survey demonstrators who were vocal about equality and justice. At the swanky Volkshaus, guests at a gathering organised by Tate’s International Council—including the Swiss collector Uli Sigg and the Turin-based patron Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo—were momentarily distracted. Another guest seemed unaware of what was really happening and was heard to utter: “Is that fracas a performance piece, perhaps?”
Spiegler the gin-slinger Former Art Basel chief Marc Spiegler is making his presence felt in Basel this week with appearances around the Messeplatz and other hot spots including the zeitgeisty Basel Social Club (see p1), where he was seen serving up mouthwatering tequila negronis and juicy gin slings. (Our correspondent can testify to Spiegler’s tip-top bartending techniques.) Asked how it felt to be free of the fair, he quipped that “it was very pleasurable; it’s 90% of the prestige but 10% of the responsibility”.
Fondation Beyeler gets the decorators in Fondation Beyeler’s stand at Art Basel is a talking point with its lifelike depiction of a workman with a paint roller standing in front of a half-painted wall. This hyper-real piece by the late US artist Duane Hanson, shown alongside an unfinished painting by Picasso, is foxing visitors who are taken aback by the ultra-authentic mottled skin and brushed hair. A quick straw poll among visitors pondering the piece came back with a result endorsing Hanson’s creation, with most respondents saying that the work looks just like an authentic human being. But one French collector was less than convinced. “He’s not blinking or breathing,” she exclaimed. Zut alors! Mind where you step: Duane Hanson’s hyperreal work reminded some visitors that they really need to sort the box room out
Lybke trousers the cash
Dressed to impress: Gerd Harry Lybke did not disclose if Neo Rauch painted him in those trews The German dealer Gerd Harry Lybke’s colourful outfits have become a fair staple, catching the eye of visitors browsing the aisles at Art Basel. His trousers emblazoned with flora and fauna are certainly eye-popping, with Lybke explaining that his fashion choices are often inspired by his artists. “I’m a groupie for all of them, including Neo Rauch,” he says. “I modelled naked for him in the 1980s in Leipzig; I charged 8DM for clothed portraits and 12DM for naked life-drawing classes.” Talk about naked ambition.
From Basel to Biennale Adriano Pedrosa, the curator of the next Venice Biennale (pictured with Shireen Gandhy of Chemould Prescott Road gallery), popped into Art Basel this week as he makes his way around the world before the exhibition launches next April. “I’ve been in Jakarta, Manila, Singapore and Hong Kong,” he tells us. (We assume Pedrosa was also scouting out prospective candidates for his 2024 selection.) “The timeframe is really challenging” he adds.
PROTEST: PHOTO: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. SPIEGLER, HANSON, LYBKE, PEDROSA: THE ART NEWSPAPER
The art of protest
BORN FROM NATURE, ELEVATED OVER TIME
DOM RUINART, THE QUINTESSENTIAL BLANC DE BLANCS
Drink responsibly
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
COMMENT Art Basel-UBS report
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MISSING:
WEALTH: MARK PETERSON/CORBIN VIA GETTY IMAGES
Changing tastes: good times for some, but many of those with plenty of cash to spend are turning to luxury collectibles—from jewellery to handbags and trainers—more than fine art ven as ordinary people across the world struggle with high inflation and soaring everyday costs, the art world’s calendar of big-name auctions ticks on. All of those involved hope that a slew of multimillion-dollar prices, usually backed by guarantees, will demonstrate that the ultra-wealthy who sustain the market are “immune from macro-economics”, as the commentator and adviser Josh Baer recently wrote in his The Baer Faxt newsletter. But is the art market, even at this financially rarefied level, really immune from wider economic forces? Art Basel and UBS’s latest global art market report, published in April, estimated worldwide gallery and auction sales at $67.8bn in 2022, 3% up on the previous year, with the top end of the market the main “driver of growth”. But the odd thing about the report’s data is that, since 2011, when the market recovered from the global financial crisis, despite inflation, estimates of worldwide art sales in better years have flatlined at between $63bn and $68bn. During that period, the S&P 500 share index increased in value by more than 200%, and the number of billionaires doubled, according
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where are the new
billionaires? There are more ultra-wealthy people than ever before. Yet the latest Art Basel-UBS report reveals lacklustre growth in the art market and the auction sales are underwhelming. What is going on? By Scott Reyburn
to Forbes. Why the disconnect between the ultra-rich getting richer and an increase in art sales? Why is this an industry immune to growth? “The art market is really small,” said Marc Spiegler, the former global director of Art Basel, in an interview at the recent Art for Tomorrow conference. “At auction, 1.5% of the works sold represent 60% of the entire value of sales,” Spiegler said. “It involves a very small group of people. There are always enough hot artists and wealthy billionaires to keep the market going. But it doesn’t grow.” In Spiegler’s experience, typical Ultra High Net Worth Individuals “have a house in Sardinia, three amazing cars and expensive vacations. They have no art.”
DWINDLING SUPPLY Of course, art sales could expand if more masterworks came to market. But, as everyone in the business points out, artists such as Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh and Jackson Pollock are not turning them out anymore. The supply of auction-fresh trophies is dwindling. For example, the latest May auctions in New York were short of out-and-out CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
COMMENT Art Basel-UBS report masterpieces—the collective low estimate for all Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips auctions was $1.3bn, less than the record $1.5bn (with fees) achieved in one night in November at the Christie’s blockbuster Paul Allen sale. Christie’s offered Henri Rousseau’s Flamingoes (1910, sold for $43.5m with fees) and Sotheby’s one of Gustav Klimt’s admired Attersee landscapes ($53.2m with fees), but both were underwhelming images. Ed Ruscha’s 1966-69 painting Burning Gas Station was hyped as “an icon” of post-war art, “on a par with Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans and Lichtenstein’s comic-book heroines”. Really? This sold for a low estimate $22.3m (with fees).
CONSIGNORS’ CONCERNS Sotheby’s single-owner sale of works from the collection of the music executive Mo Ostin did, however, include one of Magritte’s mystical L’Empire des Lumières canvases (est. $35m-$55m). One of 17 by the Belgian Surrealist, this version was almost half the size of the one sold for a record $79.7m at Sotheby’s in London in March last year, and realised $42.3m (with fees).
“Unlike Leonardo and Van Gogh and Pollock, Hermes, Nike and Ferrari are still making stuff. And lots of it”
“People who have works with a lot of potential value held back,” says Todd Levin, a New York-based art adviser. Levin cites would-be consignors’ ongoing concerns about high interest rates and the overall health of the global economy, as well as a market still trying to absorb the monster amount spent at Christie’s Paul Allen sale. “People get satiated,” adds Levin. “They need time to digest.” Like Levin, Philip Hoffman, the chief executive of the London-based advisory Fine Art Group, views this season as a moment when the market was catching its breath. Interestingly, the Fine Art Group, in partnership with Patti Wong & Associates in Hong Kong, advised one of the week’s major consignors to sell without the insurance of pre-auction guarantees. “We’d rather have
the upside,” says Hoffman, referring to the bigger cuts of over-estimate bidding sellers enjoy if they do not opt for the insurance of minimum prices. “Guarantees put people off,” Hoffman says. Given that these complex financial instruments have a reputation for suppressing bidding (and profits) at auction, this might be a trend worth watching, particularly now that high-value guarantees are often fractionalised among multiple backers to hedge risk. But if this practice encourages more consignors to sell at auction without guarantees, might this encourage more competitive bidding and price growth? Not necessarily, as Christie’s “naked” (that is, of guarantees) auction of the late real estate developer Gerald Fineberg’s collection
Above: Ed Ruscha’s Burning Gas Station (1966-69), was promoted by Christie’s as “an icon” of post-war art. Above right: Gustav Klimt’s Insel Im Attersee (around 1901-02) sold for $53.2m in May
proved on 17 May. It floundered below the $163m-$235m estimate, making only $153m (with fees) as reserves were dropped to avoid a bloodbath. A glimpse, perhaps, of the reality behind the iron curtain of guarantees in a time of soaring interest rates and a jittery economy. Indeed auction houses foresee better growth in luxury than art, evidenced by Sotheby’s acquisition of the classic car specialists RM Auctions and major investment in the real estate marketplace Concierge Auctions, as well as expanding sales of sneakers and handbags. According to Hoff man, auction houses “all want single-owner sales” of majorname art. “The problem is, they’re not making the margins. You can make 30%-40% on handbags, and they can be expanded.” Something top auction houses are not immune from is the macro economics of supply and demand. Unlike Leonardo and Van Gogh and Pollock, Hermès, Nike and Ferrari are still making stuff, and lots of it.
Peter Fischli, Untitled, 2019, Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, on permanent loan to the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, photo: Tom Bisig, Basel, © Peter Fischli
RUSCHA: COURTESY OF CHRISTIE’S IMAGES.
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Robert Irwin
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June 12–18, 2023
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Untitled,1966–67. Collection Dia Art Foundation; Gift of Milly and Arne Glimcher. © Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Light & Space Copenhagen Contemporary, 2021. Photo: © 2021 David Stjernholm
20TH/21ST CENTURY: LONDON EVENING SALE 28 June 2023 VIEWING 20–27 June 2023 8 King Street London SW1Y 6QT
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JOAN MIRÓ (1893–1983) Le Regard fixe vers l’horizon déchiré par les cris d’aigle (The Gaze Fixed on an Horizon Split Open by the Eagle’s Cries), 1953 oil and India ink on cardboard 15 x 18 ⅛ in. (38 x 46 cm.) Estimate: £1,400,000–1,800,000 © Successió Miró / ADAGP, Paris and DACS London 2023.
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
INTERVIEW Artists
P. Staff
Life on
the edge
The multimedia artist discusses their use of live wires, acid and blood. By Kabir Jhala with queer and trans identities. The show’s titular film installation, On Venus, later appeared in the 2022 Venice Biennale. For their biggest show to date, at the Kunsthalle Basel, Staff has made a series of unnerving interventions into the building’s architecture, replacing door handles and plug sockets with dried waste blood, and installing large electrified nets to delimit the space. In the final rooms, new film installations broach themes of slow horror, psychodrama, and the meeting point between violence and pleasure.
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cid, poison and live electrical wires are all materials used in the—often literally— caustic work of P. Staff. The British-born, Los Angeles-based installation artist and film-maker came to wider attention for their 2019 solo show at London’s Serpentine Galleries, in which they engineered a piping system to leak corrosive liquid from the building’s ceiling. Nearby, metal works etched with acid detailed instances of the scaremongering ways the UK media reports on gender reassignment surgery, pointing to Staff ’s enduring interest in how the laws and regulations governing our bodies intersect
THE ART NEWSPAPER: Electric nets and dried blood—you’ve not made the Kunsthalle a particularly inviting space. How dangerous was the installation and
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IN EKSTASE: PHOTOS: PHILIPP HÄNGER/KUNSTHALLE BASEL
So you don’t want the viewer to fully know if they will be harmed? It’s about asking yourself—how close do I want to get to this work? How much do I want to put myself in the line of danger? It’s a question we ask ourselves all the time: when you see someone fall in the street, when you decide to go to a protest, when you assess how safe it is for you to walk home at night as a woman, or as a queer/ trans person. The gallery allows for this questioning—a safe space to feel unsafe. In your shows, these dangerous materials, such as acid and electricity, play central thematic roles, and, in this way, become protagonists too. Why? I am interested in the space where violence tips into anarchic pleasure—the strange fine line between how good it can feel to destroy something, or yourself, and how necessary that destruction might be. The electric fences suggest carceral detainment. But they also represent our nervous systems, or the crackle of electricity that can be felt in the body during moments of danger and pleasure. For me, associating myself with dangerous, hazardous materials is about presenting a trans politics that doesn’t yield to the pressure of goodness. Trans people are so vilified in the UK, so there is a pressure to perform as the ideal subject, the
High voltage: with a series of unnerving interventions into the architecture of the Kunsthalle Basel, In Ekstase is P. Staff’s biggest exhibition to date
well-behaved trans person. I find it much more interesting to focus instead on the layered complexities to the violence that we face. Tell me about the films in your Kunsthalle Basel show. One is a five-channel synced hologram fan piece showing a video poem. The show’s title In Ekstase comes from here. It bundles together lots of what comes up in my work—relationships to harm, the autonomy of the body, destroying oneself to remake oneself. The final room is a new film titled La Nuit américaine, which uses an old Hollywood technique to simulate nighttime. Shot entirely in daylight, the content is quite banal—people going to work, cars driving around—but it is shot in this jarring, disorienting fake night. I was interested in thinking about the collapse of day into night, as a gesture towards a fracture of normative life as we know it. It ends up feeling like my version of a horror or zombie film, in which the sun feels like the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen. This is your first show of new works since Covid. How has the pandemic shifted interpretations of your work, so much of which is about disease and contamination, albeit more related to HIV/Aids. On Venus wasn’t prescient of the pandemic, even though there’s literally footage of a wet market in it. But the contagious body horror it features came into focus through the pandemic. Reshowing it at the Venice Biennale, in the main exhibition The Milk of Dreams, was incredibly intimidating, as I wasn’t sure it would still stand up after a mass experience. I’m split as to whether it is productive or detrimental to compare Covid and HIV. In my work I’m deliberately promiscuous about the things I put into dialogue with each other—both materially and theoretically. There are specificities to the ongoing Aids crisis that can’t just be bowled over by Covid, but it is interesting to also consider these pandemics as crashing into each other. Through your hazardous site-specific installations, you demand a lot from
the institutions you work with. You also demand a lot from your audience—your Serpentine Galleries show in London featured videos of animal abuse that many viewers likely found upsetting. Why do you do this? I’m often asking a question of tolerance. I don’t mean a moral or ethical tolerance, but more as though I am taking the hand
FONDATION BEYELER 10. 6. – 27. 8. 2023 RIEHEN / BASEL
of the institution, and of the viewer, and asking: how long can we stay in something uncomfortable together, and can we stick with it until we’ve reached some answer? It becomes a collective endeavour to stay with troubling, disconcerting facts that relate to who we all are. • P. Staff: In Ekstase, Kunsthalle Basel, until 10 September
Otobong Nkanga, Unearthed – Abyss, 2021 (Detail), Ans Licht gebracht – Abgrund, 1 von 4 Tapisserien; Garne: Trevira, Sidero, Polyester, Multifilament, Outdoor Polypropylen, Techno, Elirex, Mohair, Merinowolle, Superwash, Leinen, Monofilament, Econyl, Fulgaren, Viskose, 350 × 600 cm, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, © Otobong Nkanga, Foto: Markus Tretter
how much danger is the viewer in? P. STAFF: I like to use materials in which violence, abrasion or agitation are fundamental, because they reorient the choreography of the gallery, change how you navigate the space, and change how you understand your position, both corporeally and otherwise, to the work. With the dried waste blood, I collaborated with a designer, Basse Stittgen, who has invented a way of coagulating blood without any additives. It’s also my first time using electrified nets— set to a high voltage—although my 2022 show at the LA gallery Commonwealth and Council also featured live electrical wires embedded into a wall. Like my acid pieces, I work with a professional chemist and engineer, so while there is some danger involved, it is more about the theatre of danger. Although part of me doesn’t want to give that away. There should be some doubt.
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THE MIND’S EYE. Images of Nature from Claude Monet to Otobong Nkanga 230523_FB_SAMMLUNGSPRÄSENTATION_Anzeige_THE-ART-NEWSPAPER_260x184_01.indd 2
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THE ART NEWSPAPER.COM ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
IN PICTURES
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Design Miami/Basel
Dreamy
DESIGN Is Design Miami/Basel moving into the bedroom? Beds feature like never before at the fair’s 17th edition, across 26 galleries. Seeing these intimate domestic spaces displayed in the moody lighting of the fair gives Design Miami/Basel an otherworldly feel. Aptly enough, many of the rarest items on show owe a debt to the great dreamers of 20th-century art, the Surrealists. Galerie Mitterrand has François-Xavier Lalanne’s friendly donkey; Friedman Benda is exhibiting a chair dreamed up by artificial intelligence; and Galerie Gastou is offering the chance to tuck yourself into Max Ernst’s Cage-Bed. Here, we take you on a tour of six dreamworthy design displays at the fair. By Tom Seymour Photographs by David Owens
INTERIORS (1936) FROM VILLA NEL BOSCO AD ARCISATE BY PAOLO BUFFA
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Morentz Gallery
Everything in Morentz Gallery’s stand at Design Miami/Basel originates from a country house nestled in the woods of Arcisate, near Lake Como. The building and all its interiors were designed in 1936 by the Milanese architect and designer Paolo Buffa for his daughter. Lamps, beds, storage units and night stands were all designed to complement each other. Buffa favoured rarefied materials, as in the carved horse chestnut wooden shelves and undulating inlays.
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BOLIBANA (2022) BY HAMED OUATTARA
Foreign Agent
Lausanne-based gallery Foreign Agent was founded by the Swiss Chinese businessman Olivier Chow, a former employee of the Red Cross. The gallery focuses on emerging and mid-career contemporary designers from Africa. Here, it is showing a series called Bolibana by Hamed Ouattara, a furniture designer who runs a studio of apprentices in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Ouattara’s designs are works of creative salvage, such as these consoles upcycled from colourful oil barrels discarded on the side of the road. Jimena Sougri, a green console, is on sale for SFr30,000.
RON ARAD, CHARLOTTE PERRIAND AND JOSÉ ZANINE CALDAS
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Galerie Downtown François Laffanour
Galerie Downtown François Laffanour in Paris has long been a mainstay of high-end 20th-century French design. The gallery returns to Design Miami/Basel with another series of rare classic pieces by the likes of Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret. This time, they are paired with contemporary works by international designers such as Ron Arad, Choi Byung Hoon and Ettore Sottsass. The stand was awarded best gallery presentation at the fair, co-judged by the architect Lee Mindel, who describes the curation as “imaginative, thorough and elegant”.
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CAGE-BED (1974) BY MAX ERNST
Galerie Gastou
Did Max Ernst sleep soundly? One lucky buyer could find out. The Parisian Galerie Gastou has brought Cage-Bed by the German Dadaist and Surrealist, made two years before his death in 1976. A hallucinatory disc hovers above the headrest and creeping ivy clings to the surrounding cage, while dancing spirits are sewn into the eiderdown. Is the cage designed to keep the demons at bay, or trap them within? Only one way to find out.
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BONE CHAIR (2006) BY JORIS LAARMAN
Friedman Benda
Friedman Benda has a group show of works from the senior scenesters of ultracontemporary design, including Daniel Arsham and KAWS. But the stand is most notable for this seemingly unremarkable aluminium chair by the Dutch designer Joris Laarman. Gallery co-founder Marc Benda says Basel is a place to “take risks” with “the unending possibilities of design”, and Laarman’s utilitarian Bone Chair is one such example. This prototype is one of the first pieces of furniture to be made via artificial intelligence: its influence on digital design has earned it the fair’s prize for best contemporary work.
L’ÂNE PLANTÉ (1990) BY FRANÇOIS-XAVIER LALANNE
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Galerie Mitterrand
Little donkey, little donkey, why do you cost so much? A collector might be tempted to emit a mournful bray when they learn the price of François-Xavier Lalanne’s sculpture: between €5m and €6m. As a student at the Académie Julian in Paris in the 1940s, Lalanne met the Surrealists Man Ray, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp. He and his wife, Claude Lalanne, later began making furniture together as Les Lalanne. Versed in the space-age monochrome Modernism of the era, they incorporated the influence of their Surrealist friends, creating functional yet fantastical design pieces. This donkey sculpture has saddlebags that double as planters, currently potted with daisies.
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THE ART NEWSPAPER.COM ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
WHAT’S ON Art Basel and beyond
As well as events in Basel, it is easy to reach cities in Switzerland, France and Germany
Basel Non-commercial City SALTS Hauptstrasse 12 • Fallen Angels; Hosseini, Zoellner, Raka; A Nana e a Pepita 15 JUNE-15 AUGUST
Dock Kunstraum Klybeckstrasse 29 • Plots and Pieces UNTIL 19 JUNE
Fondation Beyeler Baselstrasse 101, Riehen • Doris Salcedo UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER • Basquiat: The Modena Paintings UNTIL 27 AUGUST
Exhibition where visitors make the multimedia installations sing
In their retrospective at Museum Tinguely, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller say they welcome “talented participants” interacting with their works which combine theatre, video and sound design Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: Dream Machines Museum Tinguely
CARDIFF: PHOTO: THOMAS KOSTER/KUNSTARZTPRAXIS.DE; © THE ARTIST AND LEHMBRUCK MUSEUM; DUISBURG
UNTIL 24 SEPTEMBER
The Canadian artist duo Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller began officially collaborating almost by chance, despite being married and having previously helped each other with their individual practices for over a decade. Cardiff had been invited to do a show at the artist-led space Western Front in Vancouver in the mid-1990s, after working in their shared studio on what would become The Dark Pool (1995). “We couldn’t remember whose idea it was,” she says. “So we asked the organisation: ‘can we do this as a collaboration?’” The fruits of three decades of working together have now been brought together for a new show at Museum Tinguely, which will include 14 multimedia works. As well as being a collaboration between two artists—“We work well together because we have different skills and different patience for different things,” Cardiff says—the works also rely on the attention
and participation of audiences. “Some viewers or participants have a magic that enables them to see things that others don’t,” Cardiff says. Whether it is a table covered in speakers activated by the movements of visitors (Experiment in F# Minor, 2013), or intricate details that may be missed inside the diorama windows of Escape Room (2021), the presence of what Cardiff calls “talented participants or talented viewers” can really make works sing. While the artist is referring to the curiosity and participation of members of the general public, on some occasions the visitors really are talented, as was the case in New York recently when the musician and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne turned up unannounced to play on The Instrument of Troubled Dreams (2018). “It was great,” Cardiff says, “the gallery kept texting us images of him playing.” When struck, the labelled keys of The Instrument of Troubled Dreams trigger a variety of recordings, from singing to the sounds of the sea and even windmills turning. Cardiff says that the duo will likely slip in surreptitiously to play it during the
Basel show, doing “a Hitchcock”, she says, in reference to the director’s reputation for making cameo appearances in his own films. The Basel exhibition came about after the artists were awarded the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize in 2020, which led to a show at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany, which has now travelled to Basel. The sculpture prize was first awarded in 1966 and there have only been ten other recipients, among them Richard Serra, Joseph Beuys and Jean Tinguely. It may seem like a slightly odd choice, given that, although Cardiff and Miller’s work has sculptural elements to it, their practice is much more wide ranging, embracing elements of theatre, video and sound design. But Cardiff sees it differently. “I’ve always thought of sound as sculpture,” she says. As an example, the artist points to The Forty Part Motet (2001), an installation consisting of 40 loudspeakers arranged in an oval shape. “To me it [is] completely a sculpture,” Cardiff says. “The sound becomes so physical, the way it hits you and moves around.” The duo often use “ambisonics” in their work,
a spherical-type of surround sound that can engulf listeners. “I think it was invented in the 60s or 70s by a British mathematician,” Cardiff says. “We use that a lot; George is able to move the sound around a lot in this ambisonic sphere.” Cardiff also says that “a lot of our pieces are standalone sculptures, even though, like The Killing Machine (2007), they move and are robotic.” She adds that “The Killing Machine is the most similar to Tinguely”, an artist whose work is “not inspiration necessarily” but shares a “connection” with that of Cardiff and Miller’s. “We’re hybrid artists. We’ve always liked contemporary theatre that pushes the borders, we like any sort of medium that pushes the borders,” she says, citing other influences such as sci-fi, the books of Jorge Luis Borges and Raymond Chandler, film and contemporary dance. “My biggest early influence was La Jetée by Chris Marker,” she says, referring to the experimental 1962 feature made mostly from stills that pushed the boundaries of film-making. “We just follow what’s interesting”. José da Silva
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HEK (House of Electronic Arts) Freilager-Platz 9 • Collective World-Building: Art in the Metaverse UNTIL 13 AUGUST
Historisches Museum Basel-Barfüsserkirche Barfüsserplatz 7 • Out of Use: Everyday Life in Transition UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER
Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger Spitalstrasse 18 • Evaporating Suns: Contemporary Myths from the Arabian Gulf UNTIL 16 JULY
Kunsthalle Basel Steinenberg 7 • P. Staff: In Exstase UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER • Tiona Nekkia McClodden UNTIL 13 AUGUST
Kunsthaus Baselland Freilager-Platz • Jeppe Heins: Appearing Rooms UNTIL 3 SEPTEMBER St. Jakob-Strasse 170 • Simone Holliger: venir en main UNTIL 9 JULY • Pia Fries UNTIL 9 JULY • Nature. Sound. Memory UNTIL 9 JULY
Kunstmuseum Basel (Gegenwart) St. Alban-Rheinweg 60 • Andrea Büttner: The Heart of Relations UNTIL 1 OCTOBER
Kunstmuseum Basel (Hauptbau) St. Alban-Graben • Bernard Buffet UNTIL 3 SEPTEMBER
Continued on p20
One of the key pieces in the exhibition is Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet (2001), an arrangement of the famously complex 16th-century choral work Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
WHAT’S ON Art Basel and beyond
• Born in Ukraine: The Kyiv National Art Gallery in Basel UNTIL 2 JULY
Kunstmuseum Basel (Neubau) St. Alban-Graben 20 • Shirley Jaffe: Form as Experiment UNTIL 30 JULY • Charmion von Wiegand UNTIL 13 AUGUST
Museum der Kulturen Münsterplatz 20 • At Night: Awake or Dreaming UNTIL 21 JANUARY 2024
Museum Tinguely Paul Sacher-Anlage 2 • Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller: Dream Machines UNTIL 24 SEPTEMBER • Roger Ballen: Call of the Void UNTIL 29 OCTOBER
S AM Swiss Architecture Museum Steinenberg 7 • Homo Urbanus: A Citymatographic Odyssey by Bêka & Lemoine UNTIL 27 AUGUST
Schaulager Ruchfeldstrasse 19 • Out of the Box: 20 Years of Schaulager UNTIL 19 NOVEMBER
Commercial Gagosian Rheinsprung 1 • Jordan Wolfson UNTIL 22 JULY
Galerie Carzaniga Unterer Heuberg 2 • Zaccheo Zilioli UNTIL 24 JUNE • Mark Tobey 15-18 JUNE
Galerie Gisèle Linder Elisabethenstrasse 54 • Nature UNTIL 1 JULY
Galerie Knoell
Bäumleingasse 18/Luftgässlein 4 • Rien n’est réel UNTIL 29 JULY
Galerie Mueller Rebgasse 46 • Junge Kunst 1969: Fahrner, Kuhn, Schibig, Schärer UNTIL 1 JULY
Galerie Stampa Spalenberg 2 • Projects #7: Drawing 1970-2022 UNTIL 12 AUGUST
Guillaume Daeppen Müllheimerstrasse 144 • M3RS0: Just do it UNTIL 29 JULY
Beyond Basel France ALTKIRCH CRAC Alsace
18 Rue du Château • Beatriz Santiago Muñoz 15 JUNE-17 SEPTEMBER
Germany AARAU 60km from Basel
Stadtmuseum Aarau
Laleh June Galerie Picassoplatz 4 • Marc Rembold UNTIL 31 AUGUST
6km from Basel
Hebelstrasse 121 • Takashi Suzuki UNTIL 5 AUGUST
Nicolas Krupp Gallery Rosentalstrasse 28 • Diango Hernández: All Hands UNTIL 1 JULY
Vitrine Basel Vogesenplatz 15 • Ebun Sodipo: on the Edge Sheen of a Cut 14 JUNE-27 AUGUST
Von Bartha Kannenfeldplatz 6 • Design for a Garden UNTIL 15 JULY
Weiss Falk Rebgasse 27 • Olivier Mosset UNTIL 15 JULY • Lorenza Longhi: Sentimental Pop UNTIL 15 JULY
Wilde Angensteinerstrasse 37 • Per Barclay: Aperture UNTIL 12 AUGUST
WEIL AM RHEIN Vitra Design Museum Charles-Eames-Strasse 2 • Garden Futures: Designing with Nature UNTIL 3 OCTOBER • Hot Cities: Lessons from Arab Architecture UNTIL 5 NOVEMBER
Switzerland BERN 100km from Basel
Kunsthalle Bern Helvetiaplatz 1 • Jackie Karuti: Body Machine Location UNTIL 9 JULY • Archival Ramblings UNTIL 9 JULY
Zentrum Paul Klee
Hafnerstrasse 44 • Fabian Treiber: Most Common Things UNTIL 29 JULY
Surpunt 78 • Hannah Villiger: Amaze Me UNTIL 2 JULY
Galerie Peter Kilchmann
Luma Westbau
Rämistrasse 33 • Shirana Shahbazi: Picture the Scene UNTIL 28 JULY Zahnradstrasse 21 • Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Push/Pull UNTIL 28 JULY • João Modé: Geom Poem UNTIL 28 JULY
Limmatstrasse 270 • Hans-Ulrich Obrist Archive: Édouard Glissant UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER • Dimitri Chamblas: Slow Show Installation UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER • Arthur Jafa: SloPEX UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER
Hauser & Wirth
Mai 36 Galerie
Bahnhofstrasse 1 • The God that Failed: Louise Bourgeois, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko UNTIL 16 SEPTEMBER Limmatstrasse 270 • Roni Horn: “An Elusive Red Figure...” UNTIL 16 SEPTEMBER
Rämistrasse 37 • John Baldessari: Food UNTIL 12 AUGUST • Magnus Plessen: Lucid Density UNTIL 12 AUGUST
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Genève Rue Charles-Galland 2 • Jean Dunand: The Alchemist UNTIL 20 AUGUST • Precious Reserve UNTIL 1 OCTOBER • Ugo Rondinone: When the Sun Goes Down and the Moon Goes Up UNTIL 18 JUNE
Galerie Urs Meile Rosenberghöhe 4 • Cao Yu: I Was Born to do This UNTIL 21 JULY
Kunstmuseum Luzern
Hall 1 South, Messe Basel UNTIL 18 JUNE
Volta Basel
Photo Basel
610 Klybeck, Gartnerstrasse 2 UNTIL 18 JUNE
Volkshaus Basel, Rebgasse 12-14 UNTIL 18 JUNE
Liste Art Fair
I Never Read art book fair
Hall 1.1, Messe Basel UNTIL 18 JUNE
Kaserne Basel, Klybeckstrasse 1b UNTIL 17 JUNE
• Cindy Sherman UNTIL 16 SEPTEMBER
210km from Basel
LUCERNE
Riehenstrasse 90B UNTIL 18 JUNE
Limmatstrasse 268 • Gili Tal: You May See Butterflies: Elephant Park UNTIL 16 JULY
GENEVA
100km from Basel
Design Miami
Galerie Francesca Pia
Museumstrasse 2 • Swiss Press Photo 23 UNTIL 25 JUNE • Happy You Have Rights Day: 175 Years of the Federal Constitution UNTIL 16 JULY
Place de Neuve • Loving UNTIL 24 SEPTEMBER
June Art Fair
UNTIL 13 AUGUST
MASI (Palazzo Reali)
Musée Rath
This year’s edition of Liste Art Fair includes presentations by 88 galleries from 35 countries along with special guest programmes
Video art is more than just a series of zeros, waiting to be summoned into existence. The physical space in which video, film or other time-based media is A still from the 3D animation Wildfire (meditation on fire) (2019) by the displayed is an essential Belgian artist David Claerbout from the Schaulager show part of the experience. “Every artist starting to work on a piece of art based on film or video always has this notion of space in the back of their mind,” says Isabel Friedli, the curator of Schaulager’s new exhibition Out of the Box. The work cannot exist without the room it is shown in, and for the most part these spaces are carefully controlled by the artist to meet the work’s specifications. “Custom-made, such works are singular, much like a bespoke garment,” as the exhibition statement puts it. Out of the Box presents these “boxes”, showing work by two dozen artists across the wide-open spaces of the Schaulager. Some works have been reconfigured by the artists for this new context. For example, Anri Sala’s audiovisual installation Ravel Ravel was first shown at the Venice Biennale 2013 in a six-metre-high sound-dampened space. Even the Schaulager’s hangar-like rooms could not accommodate its presentation, so Sala has created a new version of the work for the exhibition. Alongside the time-based media are sculptural and installation works that also fit the theme, including one of Monika Sosnowska’s crumpled metal boxes crammed into a corner of the building “as if by a giant” and Jean-Frédéric Schnyder’s sculptures of buildings made from banana boxes. Of course, the phrase “out of the box” has a deeper significance for the Schaulager: it opened 20 years ago as an early example of the kind of open-storage institution that has become popular in recent years, literally showing art taken out of its packing cases. It houses the 90-year-old Emanuel Hoffmann collection and when the mostly contemporary works are not out on loan, they are installed at the Schaulager, remaining on view for visitors and researchers. The Hoffmann collection has been acquiring time-based media works “ever since that kind of art existed”, Freidli says, but the pace has picked up in recent years. However, the difficulty of showing these works on an ongoing basis has meant that many have remained in their “boxes”. With new museums including Rotterdam’s Depot and London’s V&A East adopting the open-storage model, what have the Schaulager’s 20 years of experience taught them about the advantages? “People are always so amazed and surprised about seeing works in the storage rooms,” Friedli says. “Works are installed as if they are in an exhibition, but there is no context given. People can really concentrate on a work, look at it, contemplate it and experience it in a different situation.” Lee Cheshire
Monument im Fruchtland 3 • Monika Sosnowska UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER • Paul Klee: Everything Grows UNTIL 22 OCTOBER
250km from Basel
SATELLITE FAIRS
UNTIL 19 NOVEMBER
35km from Basel
Schlossplatz 23 • Blind Spot: Contemporary Photography from Aarau UNTIL 23 JULY • Johann Le Guillerm: La Calasoif (Les Imperceptibles) UNTIL 22 JUNE
Hebel_121
Out of the Box: 20 Years of Schaulager Schaulager
Europaplatz 1 • Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight UNTIL 18 JUNE • Maude Léonard-Contant UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER
LUGANO 200km from Basel
MASI (Lake)
Piazza Bernardino Luini 6 • Werner Bischof: Unseen Colour UNTIL 16 JULY • Alexej von Jawlensky UNTIL 1 AUGUST • Rita Ackermann: Hidden
via Canova 10 • Hedi Mertens: The Logic of Intuition UNTIL 15 OCTOBER
SUSCH Muzeum Susch
WINTERTHUR 105km from Basel
Kunst Museum Winterthur Stadthausstrasse 6 • Odilon Redon: Dream and Reality UNTIL 30 JULY • Portrait Tales: Portrait and Tronie in Dutch Art UNTIL 5 NOVEMBER • Wardrobe: Stories from the Closet UNTIL 19 NOVEMBER
ZURICH 90km from Basel
Kunsthaus Zürich
Galerie Mark Müller
Heimplatz • Giacometti-Dalí: Gardens of Dreams UNTIL 2 JULY • Re-Orientations: Europe and Islamic Art from 1851 to Today UNTIL 16 JULY
Museum Rietberg Gablerstrasse 15 • Lyric in Ink Lines: Painting and Poetry in the Arts of China UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER • Look Closer: African Art in the Himmelheber Archive UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER
Zahnradstrasse 21 • Doug Aitken: Howl UNTIL 22 JULY
Waldmannstrasse 6 • Tschabalala Self: Spaces and Places UNTIL 22 JULY
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst Limmatstrasse 270 • Acts of Friendship: Act 3 UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER • Pilvi Takala: Close Watch UNTIL 17 SEPTEMBER
Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Maag Areal)
Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Waldmannstrasse)
Landesmuseum Zürich
All Z’s (Picabia/Mondrian): Zabaglione (2017) by John Baldessari at Mai 36 Galerie, Zürich
Weiss Falk Sonneggstrasse 82 • Heike-Karin Föll: over-painting UNTIL 15 JULY
CLAERBOUT: © PROLITTERIS, ZURICH. BALDESSARI: © THE ARTIST
Continued from p19
Marking 20 years of Basel’s openstorage venue
TO BENEFIT
HENRY STREET SETTLEMENT ORGANIZED BY
ART DEALERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
NOVEMBER 2–5 BENEFIT PREVIEW WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1 PARK AVENUE ARMORY, NYC
THEARTSHOW.ORG Charmion von Wiegand (1896–1983), Vajrayana, 1969. Oil on canvas, 48 × 36 inches (121.9 × 91.4 cm), signed. © Estate of Charmion von Wiegand; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
The week’s
talks and events DAILY (FRI-SAT) PUBLIC ART 8.30pm-12pm Theater Basel, 7 Theaterstrasse Refik Anadol: Glacier Dreams
Immersive projection on Theater Basel inspired by the beauty and fragility of the world’s glaciers.
TOURS 3pm-4pm
Parcours: Public Guided Tour
Münsterplatz
Enjoy a guided tour of the Parcours art, Art Basel’s public sector for site-specific works. Book tickets at artbasel.com
4pm-5pm Messeplatz On Art Walks
A guided social event that lets you discover the highlights of Parcours. Hosted by independent curator Lhaga Koondhor. Register at abba23-on-artwalks.events.on-running.com/
FRIDAY 16 JUNE CONVERSATIONS 11am–noon Auditorium, Hall 1, Messeplatz The Architecture of the Future Museum
This conversation explores how architecture can lead the way in advancing and enhancing the museum. How can architecture give expression to the museum’s democratic and inclusive aspirations and accommodate new forms of digital creativity? What are the responsibilities of museum architecture when it comes to raising ecological awareness and the ongoing process of decolonising collections? Can architecture help maintain museums at the centre of our civic life? Speakers include architects Lina Ghotmeh, Kulapat Yantrasast and Jacques Herzog; and Klaus Biesenbach, director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
1pm–2pm Auditorium, Hall 1, Messeplatz From Constraint to Ecstasy: Reimaging Art with Tiona Nekkia McClodden and P. Staff
Spotlighting their current respective solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel, this talk addresses the practices of artists Tiona Nekkia McClodden and P. Staff. They discuss how they reimagine the experience of art through their interests in poetics, queer politics, desire, and mechanisms of control with curator Elena Filipovic.
3pm–4pm Auditorium, Hall 1, Messeplatz Liverpool Biennial 2023 presents uMoya: The Cosmology of Breath To breathe can be a political act, an urgent engagement of cosmological
Artist and software developer Sarah Friend is taking part in the talk ‘What Does Blockchain Mean for Ownership and Copyright?’ forces. This conversation, hosted by Khanyisile Mbongwa, curator of the Liverpool Biennial 2023, reflects on demonstration, protest, and other acts of resistance through the work of breathing with artists Nolan Oswald Dennis and Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński.
5.30pm–6.30pm Auditorium, Hall 1, Messeplatz Intersections in Art
How do artistic kinships develop? What common passions unite creatives? Conceived and hosted by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Intersections in Art brings together practitioners across art forms. Globally renowned artist and set designer Es Devlin exchange ideas on poetry, more-than-human intelligence, ecology, poetry and other affinities with artist and poet Rhael LionHeart Cape and biologist and writer Merlin Sheldrake.
FILM 7pm Stadtkino Basel The Melt Goes On Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons The Melt Goes on Forever (Harold Crooks and Judd Tully, 2022) documents the extraordinary career of the 80-year-old African American artist David Hammons, from the Watts riots in Los Angeles in the mid1960s to his current success in the international art world.
SATURDAY 17 JUNE CONVERSATIONS 1pm–2pm Auditorium, Hall 1, Messeplatz (Co-)Creating with AI: The Artist’s View
This panel examines how recent much-publicised advances in AI image-generating programmes such as Midjourney and DALL·E 2 are shaping both artists’ and the public’s imagination. How is this affecting our understanding of agency and creativity, both human and machine?
To what extent can we speak of co-creation of art, and as AI-driven platforms become more powerful, what does this mean for art? Speakers include the artists Suzanne Treister and Marguerite Humeau, and Roger Wattenhofer, professor at ETH Zurich university.
3pm–4pm Auditorium, Hall 1, Messeplatz What Does Blockchain Mean for Ownership and Copyright?
What do you “own” when you acquire an NFT? How is a work authenticated and to whom does the copyright belong? Do transactions really remain forever on the blockchain? This panel examines how ownership and copyright function on Web3, and how this rapidly developing field can empower galleries, artists and collectors in equal measure. Speakers include Bernadine Bröcker Wieder, chief executive of Arcual.
FILM 9pm Stadtkino Basel An Evening on Magical Realisms and Sci-Fi: Worldings
Screening of five films: crying choir (Milena Mihajlović, 2023), Le Ballert de Ma Solitude (Vital Z’Brun, 2018-20), Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (Ayoung Kim, 2022), Mighty Rushed Experiment (Lea Porsager, 2021), Paara (Goutam Ghoush and Jason Havneraas, 2018).
EVENT 6pm onwards Around Basel Parcours Night
Special evening programme with live performances in the greater Münsterplatz area. Museums, Institutions and other venues presenting Parcours projects have extended opening hours to provide you with a unique experience. Food and drinks available from various food trucks on Münsterplatz.
Artificial intelligence is interrogated by Roger Wattenhofer (left) of ETH Zurich university and artists Marguerite Humeau (centre) and Suzanne Treister (right) in the Conversation (Co-)Creating with AI: The Artists’ View
WATTENHOFER: © ETH ZURICH. HUMEAU: © TIM CRAIG FOR AVANT ARTE
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D UA L I T Y (R E F L E C T I O N)
BEN BROWN FINE ARTS L O N D O N | H O N G KO N G | PA L M B E A C H Hank Willis Thomas, Duality (Reflection), 2022, Stainless steel, with mirrored finish, 365 x 136 x 84 cm. (143 3/4 x 53 1/2 x 33 1/8 in.) Edition of 3 + 1 AP.
Andrea Büttner, Erntender (Detail), 2021 © Andrea Büttner / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich, Foto: Ralph Feiner, Courtesy Galerie Tschudi, Zuoz
HANK WILLIS THOMAS
June 15–18, 2023
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Latifa Echakhch, Night Time (As Seen by Sim Ouch) (detail), 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
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NEWS Regeneration CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 people,” Corinne Eckenstein says. As the director of a dance theatre in Vienna focused on younger audiences, she is particularly invested in broadening engagement in the arts: “We have world-class museums and a fantastic theatre—but experimental dance and the performing arts need more investment.” Current plans for the venue include multiple performance halls converted from the building’s silos and residential spaces for international performers. Eckenstein says that a visual arts programme will likely run alongside, as “merging artistic disciplines makes a lot of sense”. The project will take from “seven to nine years” to complete, says one of the developers, Pascal Biedermann. He describes it as a “public-private partnership” with the canton of Basel, which, he adds, is likely to provide funding at some point. Both Biedermann and Eckenstein decline to give a budget or reveal how much the site was purchased for.
BASEL SOCIAL CLUB: DAVID OWENS
The Rheinhattan project
The project is part of Klybeckplus, a wider regeneration plan launched by the canton of Basel in 2016 to redevelop the riverside district of Klybeck, associated with Basel’s world-leading pharmaceutical industry, as well as its shipping ports. In recent decades, a number of companies have reduced their operations or moved partially overseas, causing some buildings to fall into disuse. “Most of these former factories and warehouses have been turned into high rises or destroyed. It’s extremely rare to find anything of this size any more in Basel,” Eckenstein says.
New plans for the district will provide housing for 8,500 people— around a quarter of which will be affordable. Twelve high rises will also be built, leading locals to dub the project “Rheinhattan”. Part of the purpose of the project is, according to Biedermann, to help change the image of Basel as “a somewhat sedate and conservative city”. “Our programme is a sign for what is possible for a space like this in Basel,” says Robbie Fitzpatrick, a Paris gallerist who is one of BSC’s founding members. The Eckensteins have given BSC full use
“This might feel like a squat party but you can tell it’s funded by Swiss money” of the site this week free of charge—a gesture that has no doubt paid off by the sheer foot traffic to a venue previously unheard of by many regular attendees of Art Basel. It is not hard to see why Basel stands to benefit from investing in a project that is, at least anecdotally, helping the city appear vibrant and cool: “Basel really needed this, especially after Liste fair shifted venues,” says the artist Matt Copson, who is showing a work at BSC. A number of visitors also remark that despite its DIY aesthetic, the organisation and facilities—as well as the art on show—are very professional. “This might feel like a squat party but you can tell it’s
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Basel Social Club features galleries, project spaces, films and performances, plus pop-up restaurants, bars and even a nightclub room funded by Swiss money—the toilets are so clean. In Belgium we’d be pissing in a hole in the floor,” says Damîen BertelleRogier, a Brussels-based gallerist.
Warming up Basel
Promises of an exciting new cultural chapter come as Art Basel increases efforts to make the city a “warmer place”, by arranging for hotels and restaurants to lower tariffs during the fair week, Noah Horowitz, the fair’s chief executive, told The Art Newspaper in an interview last month. “There have always been complaints that Art Basel week feels a bit dead past Wednesday, after all the big collectors have left,” says Peter Steinmann, founder of Basel art organisation Space 25. “Keeping things going till the end of the week encourages people to stay. And if you can make the city fun all year round,
obviously that’s even more lucrative.” While Basel has long touted itself as Switzerland’s cultural capital, maintaining, or even raising its profile, as well as diversifying its audiences, appears increasingly essential. The art scene of its long-standing rival Zürich continues to grow, while the inaugural Paris+ par Art Basel fair has similarly raised concerns as to whether Basel’s cultural cachet is waning. Locals say that initiatives such as BSC have not emerged from out of the blue but rather represent how public interests are increasingly meeting an existing, and exciting, contemporary art scene. Many Baselers refer to the non-profit venue Salts, established in 2009, as an example of a local space that platforms contemporary emerging art. Some also identify an inflection point for the city’s contemporary art scene around seven
years ago, after a handful of commercial galleries, such as Weiss Falk, began opening around Rebgasse. Others say that since the pandemic, the city has a new energy, with several programmes and spaces opening in the past 18 months. This includes the experimental exhibition space Civic, which is attached to the Basel Academy of Art and Design, and was founded by the curator Matylda Kryzkowsky. Gesturing to the packed crowd at BSC, gathered on Wednesday evening to watch a performance by the musician Mykki Blanco, she says: “Half of these people are locals: art students and professional artists. There is a great contemporary art scene in this town that people tend to overlook.” When asked why that is, she says: “The Swiss are quite silent about this sort of thing. Maybe now they will have to be less so.” Kabir Jhala
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL FAIR EDITION 16-18 JUNE 2023
COLLECTOR’S EYE Art lovers tell us what they’ve bought and why
THE ART NEWSPAPER: What was the first work you ever bought? SHANE AKEROYD: My first piece was Flashers (1996) by Adam Chodzko and then not long after Grotto (2000) by Chris Landoni, who unfortunately is no longer with us. They were each making interesting work at that time, and I met them both. But I was also collecting a whole bunch of things, not just movingimage work. Around that time, I also bought a Damien Hirst spot painting, which is now on long loan to Tate. You’ve always bought movingimage work in conjunction with other media. I never thought about collecting moving-image work specifically until relatively recently when I realised that I actually have a pretty substantial moving-image collection. It’s around 200 pieces—15% of the overall collection, which is around 1,500 works. So, it’s not a big percentage but
Stay on track: Akeroyd's top tip for first-time Basel visitors is to get to grips with the city's tram system
world, with curators, galleries and especially artists. Massively. I’m close to people who work in public galleries, in private galleries and of course, most importantly, the artists. Sarah Lucas is definitely one of my favourite artists because I’ve spent the most time with her over the years, and I’m very good friends with Joan Jonas. Being able to hang around with Sonia Boyce in Venice was a real privilege, and Ingrid Pollard is also someone I’m now developing a friendship with. I talk to artists a lot; it’s a great privilege.
Shane Akeroyd The Hong Kong-based FinTech entrepreneur and philanthropist explains why he is drawn to moving-image work and offers advice for the Basel newbie it just keeps growing because when you have a certain body of work you want to keep adding to it. It sort of creeps up on you; all of a sudden there are these groups and bodies of work, and instead of it being an occasional purchase it becomes more pre-meditated.
really knew anything about it. Then, by happy coincidence, around 1983 I met [the gallerist] Paul Stolper. His father was a big dealer and I ended up hanging out in his house in Sloane Square; we started going out to shows and meeting artists. We’re still very good friends.
How would you define your taste? I like stuff that is more challenging, that deals with issues that are important, whether it’s immigration, racial politics or gender politics, I’ve got a lot of queer art in the collection, and particularly in the moving-image collection. P. Staff is one of the first contributors to the website with whom I’ve also become very friendly, thanks to [the curator] Polly Staple. She and Sadie Coles have both been very important to this whole project; it was Sadie’s idea in the first place.
Much of your collecting seems to be shaped by the many relationships you have forged throughout the art
What first turned you on to art? I came from humble beginnings—a mixed-race kid in a council house in Kent with a teenage mum—so there was no money and I’ve always had to work. My brother and I were into Roxy Music and David Bowie, listening to music and, when we could, going to nightclubs in London. We were generally interested in culture before we
Where do you like to eat or drink while you’re in Basel? Highlight of the week and a wonderful celebration is always the midweek Kunsthalle Basel dinner at Restaurant Kunsthalle. I’ve also had some superfun dinners with wonderful artists, gallerists and collectors at Rhyschänzli. But nothing beats lunch at the Restaurant Im Park at the Fondation Beyeler followed by an afternoon in the museum. That’s where the deal for the Tate’s British collection acquisition fund was hatched with Maria [Balshaw] and Polly [Staple]! What tip would you give to someone visiting Basel for the first time? Get to know how the trams work or be with a friend who does! Interview by Louisa Buck • www.akeroydcollection.com
THE ART NEWSPAPER Art Basel editions
THE ART NEWSPAPER Editor, The Art Newspaper Alison Cole Deputy editor and digital editor Julia Michalska Managing editor Louis Jebb
ART BASEL EDITIONS EDITORIAL Editors Lee Cheshire, Hannah McGivern, Julia Michalska Live editor Aimee Dawson Contributors Georgina Adam, Dorian Batycka, Anna Brady, Louisa Buck, Gareth Harris, Catherine Hickley, Louis Jebb, Kabir Jhala, Chinma JohnsonNwosu, Ben Luke, Scott Reyburn, Tom Seymour, José da Silva, Anny Shaw Production editor Hannah May Kilroy Design James Ladbury Sub-editing Andrew McIIwraith, Vivienne Riddoch Picture editor Katherine Hardy Photographer David Owens
PUBLISHING AND COMMERCIAL Publisher Inna Bazhenova Chief executive officer Nick Sargent Partnerships and art fairs manager Rohan Stephens Global head of sales Juliette Ottley Commercial head of arts and fairs (international) Emily Palmer Advertising sales manager, Americas Kristin Troccoli Sales executive, Americas Steven Kaminski Subscriptions manager Louisa Coleman Art director (commercial) Daniela Hathaway
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Art of dining: Restaurant Im Park is an essential pitstop before perusing the Beyeler
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SHANE AKEROYD © NICOLA CHU. RESTAURANT IM PARK: © ROBERT RIEGER/FONDATION BEYELER
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“Being able to hang around with Sonia Boyce in Venice was a real privilege”
he collectorphilanthropist Shane Akeroyd has long been a quietly supportive artworld presence. As well as holding numerous institutional board and committee memberships in the UK and internationally, the British-born, Hong Kong-based FinTech entrepreneur is also underwriting the associate curator position of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale through to 2030 and recently initiated an annual £50,000 acquisition fund with the Tate. Earlier this month he launched the Akeroyd Collection, an online platform that shares his extensive collection of film, video and moving-image works in a six-weekly programme of screenings and commissioned texts. The first programme features works by Tony Cokes, Joan Jonas, Takahiro Inamori and Lydia Ourahmane. Akeroyd, who is at Art Basel this week, tells us more about his collecting habits.
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MUSEUMS TO CONNECT US
China
ART BASEL 2023
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Nicolas Party, Mountains (detail), 2023, soft pastel on linen, 160 × 220 × 3.8 cm / 63 × 86 5/8 × 1 1/2 in © Nicolas Party. Photo: Adam Reich
NICOLAS PARTY
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