Lehmann Maupin returns to Art Basel with a presentation exploring the relationship between identity and place. Employing traditional and nontraditional processes spanning painting, embroidery, glass beads, and metalwork, artists including Heidi Bucher, Do Ho Suh, Liu Wei, and Nari Ward question what it means to belong simultaneously to oneself and to one’s community. The works on view weave a complex tapestry of various cultural, geographic, collaborative, and psychic threads. In so doing, the presentation elucidates the tensions therein while gesturing towards the utopian possibilities posed by deep connections across time and space, language and culture.
At the fair, the gallery will present late artist Heidi Bucher’s Untitled iridescent soft sculpture, Zurich, (1974), part of a series of soft sculptures created in Los Angeles during the mid-1970s. The sculpture, made from mother-of-pearl pigments, foam material, and net lace, is wearable and meant to cover the body completely, creating an architectural structure that consumes the human form. Bucher created a number of self-portraits while wearing Untitled iridescent soft sculpture, Zurich, where she appears as though wearing a set of soft yet geometric butterfly wings. Bucher’s wearable sculptures exemplify her decades-long examination of the relationship between the body, clothing, and architectural space. The work explores the physical boundaries between the body and its surroundings through a distinctly feminine lens, blurring the lines between clothing and skin, object and person, public and private. Bucher will open a solo exhibition on July 6 in the gallery’s Seoul location, on the heels of her major retrospective, Spaces are Shells, are Skins at Art Sonje Center.
Central to the gallery’s presentation is Do Ho Suh’s installation Intercoms, London Home & Studio, New York Home, Studio & Corridor, Berlin Home, and Providence Home; Lighting Fixtures, New York Studio & Corridors, Seoul Home, Berlin Home, Providence Home; Fuse Boxes, London Studio, New York Home, Studio & Corridor (2019). The work is composed of a selection of his acclaimed Specimens, precise fabric replicas of objects (doorknobs, outlets, light switches, etc.) from the artist’s previous homes and studios around the world. The particular placement of the Specimens in the installation—each framed in its own vitrine-like box and arranged in groups by function—heightens our awareness of the extraordinary nature of highly tactile but often overlooked components of our homes. Whether memorializing a light fixture, fuse box, or intercom, Suh’s simulacra of quotidian objects silently punctuates the everyday.
Liu Wei’s new large-scale painting Transparency (2022) continues his ongoing exploration of developing cities and urban landscapes. The composition’s precise grid-like structure and stark, overlapping geometrical shapes appear as though technologically crafted, evoking an artificial aesthetic that belies the analog nature of Liu Wei’s technique. Transparency favors a bold and complex color palette anchored in yellows and pinks; a sequence of vertical lines covers the surface of the canvas, largely obscuring the atmospheric swath of shapes below. On the right of the canvas, a large circle emerges prominently from the background, yet does not succeed in breaching the gridded surface of the picture plane. Reminiscent of the sun’s attempt to pierce the density of an urban jungle, the circle’s journey exemplifies the tension embedded in industrial transformation: as natural and urban landscapes increasingly integrate and compete, Liu Wei creates a scenario in which neither attains total domination.
Restin’ Bliss (2023), one of Nari Ward’s acclaimed copper panel works, will also debut at the fair. In his copper works, Ward applies patina to the surface and allows the subsequent process of exquisite discoloration to direct the composition. Restin’ Bliss draws particular inspiration from city sidewalks, exploring the street itself as a pictorial surface. Inspired by the countless sidewalk memorials erected during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ward gathered found objects from his community including candles, bottles, and stuffed animals, and placed them on the copper panels before applying the patina. The surface of the work retains the distinct, ghostly outlines of each form—a haunting patchwork of trace and reference. Ward has also punctured geometric patterns into the panel, which reference traditional Congolese “cosmograms,” an ancient prayer symbol that represents the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. In Restin’ Bliss, Ward manifests cultural memory through material, honoring communal spaces of healing.
Other highlights include new and historical works by McArthur Binion, Frank Bowling, Dominic Chambers, Gilbert & George, Tom Friedman, Lee Bul, Liza Lou, Arcmanoro Niles and David Salle, among others. The gallery’s presentation at Art Basel coincides with important museum exhibitions around the world, including the debut of Liza Lou’s installation Trailer (1998–2000) at the Brooklyn Museum this October; and Liu Wei’s recent participation in the group exhibition Cruel Youth Diary: Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. This fall, Nari Ward will have a solo exhibition of new work in our London gallery, and Arcmanoro Niles will present a body of new work in our New York gallery.