Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce its presentation highlights for the 2026 edition of Art Basel. Coinciding with the gallery’s 30th anniversary, this year’s booth will bring together significant works by leading 20th-century figures, including Louise Bourgeois, Heidi Bucher, John Chamberlain, Wifredo Lam, and Ana Mendieta, and Lucia Wilcox, alongside contemporary works from the program. The booth will also highlight works by artists presenting major museum exhibitions across Europe this summer, including a number of artists who are participating in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Anchoring the gallery’s presentation this year is a historic work by Wifredo Lam, positioned in dialogue with artists from the gallery’s program whose practices have been shaped by his influence, including Kader Attia, McArthur Binion, and Teresita Fernández. The work on view, created in 1941, dates to a pivotal moment in Lam’s practice, when he began developing the hybrid visual language that would later culminate in his iconic Femme Cheval figures. Lam’s work serves as a vital point of departure for understanding the work of Fernández, Attia, and Binion, each of whom engage with questions of power, memory, and identity in their individual work. Across their respective practices—whether through Fernández’s expansive rethinking of what constitutes landscape, Attia’s engagement with colonial aftermaths and processes of repair, or Binion’s layered systems of abstraction grounded in personal archive and repetition—each artist uses their distinct visual language as a vehicle for examining how histories are carried, fragmented, and reassembled within contemporary culture. Collectively, their practices extend Lam’s commitment to expanding the canon by challenging the Eurocentric boundaries of art. This presentation comes on the heels of Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream at MoMA—the first retrospective in the United States to encompass the full trajectory of Lam’s practice.
Historic work by the late Swiss artist Heidi Bucher will also feature prominently in the presentation in celebration of the artist’s centennial year. Bucher is remembered for her innovative use of latex and exploration of the physical boundaries between the body and its surroundings. Working across the United States, Switzerland, and the Canary Islands, Bucher forged a practice anchored in familial, cultural, and architectural histories and deeply entwined with contemporary concerns around the boundaries between public and private space, and femininity and the body. The works on view, two pieces titled Libellenobjekt (Dragonfly Object) (1981), feature the artist’s signature dragonfly motif. Throughout Bucher’s work, the dragonfly serves as a metaphor for self-empowerment through transformation. These iconic objects demonstrate the artist’s lifelong fascination with metamorphosis.
Following our announcement of the representation of Rana Begum, the gallery will also present a range of works that underscore the artist’s exploration of light and color in dialogue with abstract works by John Chamberlain. Over the past two decades, the Bangladeshi-British artist has developed a distinct visual language rooted in repetition and abstraction. Drawing on the history of geometric abstraction—as well as the practices of artists such as Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Mary Martin, Sol Lewitt, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Tess Jaray—Begum’s work is informed by the urban environment and the geometric motifs of traditional Islamic art and architecture. For Art Basel, the gallery will present a sculptural wall relief from Begum’s Chevrons series, highlighting the artist’s inventive use of industrial materials and reflective surfaces. A series of paintings informed by Islamic art and the spiritual significance of repetition and ritual will also be on view.
The gallery will also spotlight works by artists with major institutional exhibitions on view across Europe this summer, including Nari Ward, whose forthcoming exhibition Until That Day opens at DESTE Foundation in Hydra on June 23, and Cecilia Vicuña, whose solo exhibition El glaciar ido (The Vanished Glacier) is currently on view at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin. Additionally, the presentation will bring together works by artists featured in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and its collateral exhibitions, including Attia, Hernan Bas, Tammy Nguyen, David Salle, Erwin Wurm, and Billie Zangewa. Among the highlights is a new large-scale painting by Nguyen, whose multidisciplinary practice explores the moral gray areas that permeate global history; an early painting by Bas titled The Temptation of the Shepherd, created in 2007 as part of his Saints & Secret Sects series; and a new silk-embroidered collage by Zangewa that draws on scenes and experiences from the artist’s everyday life.
Further highlights include new and recent works by artists from the gallery’s global program, including: Dominic Chambers, Billy Childish, Freya Douglas-Morris, Kim Yun Shin, Liza Lou, Lari Pittman, Anna Park, Oren Pinhassi, Calida Rawles, Robin Rhode, and Do Ho Suh.
Media Inquiries
Adriana Elgarresta, Global Director of Communications & Marketing
adriana@lehmannmaupin.com