Events

Art Basel Unveils Further Highlights for its 2024 Edition

Arte por Excel… 12-04-2024

The 2024 edition of Art Basel in Basel will feature 286 of the world’s leading galleries, showcasing the highest quality of works across all media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and digital artworks. 22 first-time participants will join a robust lineup of European exhibitors and returning galleries from around the globe.

In addition to remarkable presentations in its Galleries, Feature, Statements, and Edition sectors, around 70 large-scale installations and performances will be on view in the show’s Unlimited sector, while the Kabinett sector will return for the second time to Art Basel’s Swiss edition to spotlight distinct, curated exhibitions within the main booths of exhibitors.

This year’s show will also present an expanded city-wide program, which will include Agnes Denes’ seminal land art work Honouring Wheatfield - A Confrontation (2024) on the Messeplatz, curated by Samuel Leuenberger. The reconceptualized Parcours sector, curated for the first time by Stefanie Hessler, will unfold along Clarastrasse up to the Middle Bridge, where Art Basel will activate the Merian to provide audiences with a stimulating venue for around-the-clock artistic events and showcases. Free to the public, Art Basel’s Conversations series, curated for the first time by Kimberly Bradley, will focus on ways to build and shape the art world’s future, while the Film program, curated by Filipa Ramos, will showcase a unique lineup of surveys, feature films, and a special program for young audiences from age four onwards.

Maike Cruse, Director of Art Basel in Basel, said: ‘I am particularly excited about this year’s expanded city-wide program as a testament to Basel’s cultural pulse. The Messeplatz project, featuring Agnes Denes’ transformative installation Honouring Wheatfield - A Confrontation (2024), redefines the dialogue between environment, land art, and the value of things. Our Parcours sector transforms the Clarastrasse into an exhibition exploring the topics of circulation and transformation. And the Merian will not only showcase Petrit Halilaj’s installation on the façade but will also extend Art Basel’s activation into the evening and night. Join us to celebrate community and the limitless possibilities of artistic expression along the Rhine.’

Unlimited

Art Basel’s unique sector for large-scale projects, Unlimited provides exhibitors the opportunity to present monumental installations, colossal sculptures, boundless wall paintings, comprehensive photo series, and expansive video projections. Unlimited will be curated for the fourth time by Giovanni Carmine, Director of Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen.

Highlights from Unlimited include:

A site-specific installation by Swedish artist Anna Uddenberg, titled Premium Economy (2023-2024), presented by Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler and Meredith Rosen Gallery
A reenactment of American artist Faith Ringgold's first multimedia performance, titled The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro (1976), presented by Goodman Gallery in collaboration with ACA Galleries
Untitled (2022), an installation by American artist Henry Taylor, presented by Hauser & Wirth
Greek Italian artist Jannis Kounellis’ installation Senza titolo (vele) (1993), presented by Kewenig
An installation of a significant section from American artist Keith Haring’s mural Untitled (FDR NY) #5-22 (1984), presented by Gladstone Gallery and Martos Gallery
A new video installation titled DOKU The Flow (2024) by Chinese artist Lu Yang, presented by Société
Chess (2012), a seminal installation by American artist Lutz Bacher, presented by Galerie Buchholz
ARCHITEKTURTRAUM (2001) by Swiss artist Miriam Cahn, presented by Meyer Riegger and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff
A complete set of Robert Frank’s The Americans (1954-1957) presented by Pace Gallery and Thomas Zander

Art Basel’s Unlimited Night will return on Thursday, June 13, providing visitors the chance to experience the sector alongside special performances during extended opening hours. For the first time, visitors of Unlimited will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite artwork for the whole duration of Art Basel. The Unlimited People's Pick will then be announced towards the end of the show week. Further details around the prize will follow in due course.

Parcours

Curated for the first time by Stefanie Hessler, Director of Swiss Institute (SI) in New York, Art Basel’s public art sector will unfold along Clarastrasse up to the Middle Bridge, connecting the fairgrounds with the Rhine. Hessler’s concept for Parcours is a curated exhibition that meanders through empty stores and operational shops, a hotel, a restaurant, a brewery, and other quotidian spaces on Basel’s Clarastrasse. Through ambitious projects, many of them site-specific and newly produced, the sector explores transformation and circulation in areas such as trade, globalization, and ecology. Hessler takes over Parcours from Samuel Leuenberger, who successfully managed and expanded the sector over the past eight years.

Highlights from Parcours include:

An architectural structure lined with paintings that houses produce on sale at the Tropical Zone store by London-based artist Alvaro Barrington, presented by Sadie Coles HQ, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Massimodecarlo
An installation combining traditional Chinese shadow play and digital animation by Swedish artist Lap-See Lam, unfolding in a food court, and presented by Galerie Nordenhake
A portable garden by Austrian artist Lois Weinberger, transposing nature into an urban context with the aim to attract insects and birds, presented by Galerie Krinzinger
A performance by London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh interrogating the circulation of information and goods inside a partially vacant shopping mall, presented by Thaddaeus Ropac and Lehmann Maupin
A series of pirate flags by Rirkrit Tiravanija, lining the Middle Bridge crossing the Rhine, presented by neugerriemschneider
Peruvian artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s Conversion systems contraposing ancestral techniques and artisanal materials with industrial applications in petrol extraction, installed inside a brewery, presented by Galerie Gisela Capitain

Newly the Parcours Night will be hosted on Wedneday, June 12, from 8 to 11pm, offering a festive night filled with live performances and other acts along Clarastrasse and at the Merian. All Parcours locations will have extended opening hours to provide visitors a unique experience.

Messeplatz

The city’s Messeplatz will feature a site-specific presentation by conceptual artist Agnes Denes, curated for the third time by Samuel Leuenberger, founder of the non-profit exhibition spaces SALTS in Birsfelden and Bennwil. Denes’ artistic practice is distinctive in terms of its aesthetics and engagement with socio-political ideas. As a pioneer of environmental, ecological, and land art, she will present the piece Honouring Wheatfield - A Confrontation (2024), referring to her iconic land art work from the 1980s. The work will remain on the Messeplatz throughout the summer until its harvest. Born in 1931 in Budapest, Hungary, raised in Sweden, and educated in the United States, Agnes Denes today lives in New York City.

The Merian

The Merian, situated right at the Middle Bridge along the Rhine in Kleinbasel and across Basel’s Old Town, features a hotel bar, restaurant, and terrace that will host a continuous, around-the-clock program. The façade of the former Café Spitz will be taken over by When The Sun Goes Away We Paint The Sky, an artwork by Petrit Halilaj symbolizing guidance and commemorating the 30th anniversary of the partnership between UBS and Art Basel. Evenings will be curated and enlivened by various members of the global and local arts community including Jenny Schlenzka, Director of Gropius Bau Berlin; Aindrea Emelife, Curator Modern and Contemporary at the Museum of West African Art in Benin City, Nigeria; Pati Hertling, Director of Performance Space New York; Stefanie Hessler, Director of Swiss Institute New York; Benedikt Wyss, Curator of SALTS and Finally Saturday in Basel; and others.

Film

For its 25th edition, the Film program will present a week of extraordinary artists’ cinema projects. Film is curated by Filipa Ramos, founding curator of the online video platform Vdrome and lecturer at the Arts Institute of the FHNW in Basel, in collaboration with Marian Masone, a New York-based independent curator. This year’s program will address topics such as ecology, intimacy, history, and politics in a series of short film programs, surveys, and feature films.

The program starts on Wednesday, June 12 with ‘The Political Life of Plants’, a series of short films by Nefeli Chrysa Avgeris, Zheng Bo, Ulla von Brandenburg, Kyriaki Goni, and Tiffany Sia. Inspired by the title of two films by Bo, the program looks at how the vegetal world has been a major figure in recent artists’ cinema. On Saturday, June 15, ‘Bats and Rockets’ will celebrate artists’ films for young audiences, from age four onwards. This year’s film program will then conclude with Taking Venice (2023), a documentary about Robert Rauschenberg’s participation in the 1964 Venice Biennale by Amei Wallach.

Conversations

Art Basel’s flagship talks program returns for its 20th anniversary edition with an exciting lineup, curated for the first time by Berlin-based art critic Kimberly Bradley. Bringing together more than 25 thought leaders, the 2024 edition features 11 focused panels, all relating to the pressing issue of how to build and shape contemporary culture’s future. The discussions will explore the art trade’s challenges and opportunities in a super election year, the potentials of increased interdisciplinarity in museums, how artists relate to politics in a time of global crisis, and the ways digital technologies are recasting art’s social and economic ecosystems. Conversations is free and accessible to all.

Highlights from this year’s Conversations series include:

Launching the program with a special celebration of 20 years of Conversations, Hans Ulrich Obrist will speculate on worldbuilding and revisit the notion of utopia with pioneering digital artists Rebecca Allen and Danielle Braithwaite Shirley, as well as architect Carlo Ratti.
Ahead of her Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, artist Mire Lee reflects on her practice – which references the art-historical lineage of kinetic sculpture – in the Premiere Artist Talk.
Ben Davis, Artnet News’ Editor-at-Large, will discuss how technology is blurring the lines of art’s communities and art’s valuation with artist Cecile B. Evans.
Legal experts Katalin Andreides and Till Vere-Hodge, along with UBS’s Paul Donovan, will debate the ways potential political and legal reorientations in an election year could change how art is bought, sold, and distributed, in a talk moderated by Georgina Adam.
The talks will conclude on a light note, with Basel-based artist Sophie Jung and curator/critic Francesco Bonami discussing the multiple roles humor and satire play in contemporary art.
During the show’s final weekend, a curated series of videos of Conversations’ most notable debates, spanning nearly two decades, will be on view in the Conversations auditorium.

Conversations will take place from June 13 to 16 at the Auditorium in Hall 1. The series is free to attend.

Kabinett

The sector dedicated to curated and thematic presentations featured in a separate section within galleries’ main booths, Kabinett will present 21 projects by 22 galleries for the second year.

Highlights from Kabinett include:

Air de Paris’ presentation of works by American artist Sarah Pucci and her daughter Dorothy Iannone. The presentation aims to shed light on Pucci’s mesmerizing objects by contextualizing them within the loving relationship with her daughter.
Croy Nielsen’s presentation of paintings by German Japanese artist Ernst Yohji Jaeger, addressing intimacy and emotion with a moody palette and mysterious subject matter
Experimenter’s presentation of Indian artist Kanishka Raja’s Switzerland for Movie Stars (2014), which plots a speculative Google map journey from Srinagar to Geneva through a panoramic panel painting and an accompanying brochure
Catriona Jeffries’ presentation of paintings by Canadian painter Elizabeth McIntosh, which respond to the ever-shifting workflows of contemporary industrialization
Sies + Höke’s presentation of works by German artist Gerhard Richter, including mirror pieces of various tints and dimensions as well as Richter’s quintessential stainless-steel spheres.