We invite you to preview highlights from our presentation in advance of the fair featuring works by:
Kader Attia, McArthur Binion, Heidi Bucher, Dominic Chambers, Mandy El-Sayegh, Tom Friedman, Gilbert & George, Nicholas Hlobo, Shirazeh Houshiary, Lee Bul, Liu Wei, Liza Lou, Arcmanoro Niles, Catherine Opie, OSGEMEOS, Helen Pashgian, Lari Pittman, Robin Rhode, David Salle, Do Ho Suh, Nari Ward, and Erwin Wurm
This year marks the 20th anniversary of our participation in Art Basel. We are honored to return to Basel for this marquee fair with a presentation that showcases our long-term commitment to our artists and the global perspectives that continue to define our program.
Central to our presentation is this 2019 installation by Do Ho Suh. 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 this 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.
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At the fair, we 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.
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