ART BASEL in Basel 2024

 Art Basel 2024 new locations, new events and a fantastic program.

285 leading galleries and expanded city-wide program for its 2024 edition in Basel, the first led by the show’s new Director Maike Cruse.

•  With 285 premier galleries from 40 countries and territories, Art Basel will once again bring together the international art world at its marquee fair in Basel, Switzerland.
•  22 galleries from across Europe, Asia, and the Americas will join the show for the first time.
•  This will be the first edition led by Maike Cruse, who took on the position of Director, Art Basel in Basel in July 2023.
• The show’s Parcours sector will be curated for the first time by Stefanie Hessler, Director of New York’s Swiss Institute (SI), and evolve into a public art exhibition unfolding in close vicinity to Messe Basel on Clarastrasse.
• Art Basel will expands its presence within the city by activating the Hotel Merian as a continuous, around-the-clock venue for artistic events and showcases, while Basel’s world-class cultural institutions will stage an exciting program of exhibitions and events throughout the week.
• Art Basel, whose Global Lead Partner is UBS, will takes place at Messe Basel from June 13 to 16, 2024, with Preview Days on June 11 and 12.

For its 2024 edition in Basel, Art Basel brings together 285 leading international galleries to present artworks of the highest quality across all media – from painting and sculpture to photography and digital works – by artists ranging from early-twentieth-century Modern pioneers to emerging contemporary practitioners. Art Basel in Basel will once again reaffirm its unparallelled position as a platform for discovery and encounters that drive the art world.

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.

The outstanding diversity of artistic perspectives on view at the fair will be complemented by lively events and activities spanning the entire city and its prominent cultural institutions, highlighting Basel’s unique appeal, and underscoring the significant impact of Art Basel on its hometown.

Maike Cruse, Director of Art Basel in Basel, said:

‘I am looking forward to welcoming the global art community to Basel come June for the upcoming edition of our show. With the addition of 22 new participants, it promises to be exceptionally dynamic and filled with exciting discoveries. I am thrilled about the expansion of the city-wide program, which now includes the public art sector Parcours on Clarastrasse newly curated by Stefanie Hessler. Additionally, I eagerly anticipate our project at Hotel Merian, which will contribute to the continued growth of Art Basel’s presence in the city through a fresh approach.’

22 galleries will join Art Basel in Basel for the first time, including five galleries entering directly into the main sector of the show. They are:

• Karma (Los Angeles, New York)
• Tina Keng Gallery (Taipei)
• Madeln Gallery (Shanghai)
• Mayoral (Paris, Barcelona)
• Yares Art (New York,Santa Fe)

The Feature sector, dedicated to art-historical projects, will welcome 11 first-time participants:

• Almeida & Dale Galeria de Arte (São Paulo)
• Bank (Shanghai)
• Thomas Brambilla (Bergamo)
• Larkin Erdmann Gallery (Zurich)
• Galerie Le Minotaure (Paris)
• Maruani Mercier (Brussels, Knokke, Zaventem)
• Galerie Mueller (Basel)
• Gallery Wendi Norris (San Francisco)
• Parker Gallery (Los Angeles)
• Meredith Rosen Gallery (New York)
• The Third Gallery Aya (Osaka)

The Statements sector, dedicated to solo presentations by emerging artists, will welcome six galleries not having participated in Art Basel in Basel before:

• Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou (Paris)
• Felix Gaudlitz (Vienna)
• Nome (Berlin)
• OSL contemporary (Oslo)
• ROH Projects (Jakarta)
• Wooson (Daegu, Seoul)

Eight galleries that previously exhibited in Feature or Statements graduates into the main sector of the fair. They are Commonwealth and Council (Mexico City, Los Angeles), Crèvecœur (Paris), Gaga (Guadalajara, Mexico City, Los Angeles), Galerie Christophe Gaillard (Paris, Brussels), Garth Greenan Gallery (New York), Tina Kim Gallery (Seoul, New York), Mazzoleni (Turin, London), and Galerie Bene Taschen (Cologne).

Galleries

The fair’s main sector will feature 243 of the world’s leading galleries, presenting painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, photography, video, digital art, and editioned works of the highest quality. Eight galleries that previously exhibited in Feature or Statements will graduate into the main sector of the fair, showcasing the full range of their program, while the sector welcomes five first-time exhibitors.

Feature

Now focusing uniquely on art-historical projects, the sector will include 16 curated presentations and welcome 11 first-time exhibitors. Highlights from the sector include a condensed retrospective of artist Jean Tinguely by newcomer Galerie Mueller (Basel); a presentation of exemplary oil paintings by Basel-born artist Irène Zurkinden by first-time participant Meredith Rosen Gallery (New York); a presentation of Senegalese artist Viyé Diba – an emblematic figure of Modern Senegalese art – by OH Gallery (Dakar); works by prolific American artist Peter Halley, presented by newcomer Maruani Mercier (Brussels, Knokke, Zaventem); and a showcase of the remarkable artistic partnership between Maryn Varbanov and Song Huai-Kuei (aka Madame Song), presented by Bank (Shanghai).

Statements

Dedicated to emerging artists from across the globe, Statements features 18 solo presentations and welcome six new entries. Highlights include: an installation titled Safe to Visit (2024) by Angolan artist Sandra Poulson, presented by Jahmek Contemporary Art (Luanda); 15 sculptural works representing personal prayers by Norwegian-Sudanese artist Ahmed Umar, presented by newcomer OSL contemporary (Oslo); and a sonic installation titled An OK Space to Rest (2024) by Indonesian artist Julian Abraham “Togar”, presented by newcomer ROH Projects (Jakarta). Additional highlights include a video installation by Hong Kong artist and filmmaker Tiffany Sia, presented by first-time participant Felix Gaudlitz (Vienna); and a multi-part installation by Argentinian artist La Chola Poblete, presented by Barro (Buenos Aires).

Annual Baloise Art Prize

The 25th Annual Baloise Art Prize, comprising a cash prize of CHF 30,000 per winner, will be awarded to up to two artists exhibiting in Statements. In addition, the Baloise Group will acquire works by the selected artists to donate to two leading European museums, which will hold solo exhibitions of the artists’ works.

Edition

Spread across both floors of Hall 2, the sector will feature eight leading galleries in the field of prints and editioned works: Borch Editions (Copenhagen), Cristea Roberts Gallery (London), Gemini G.E.L. (Los Angeles), knust kunz gallery editions (Munich), Carolina Nitsch (New York), René Schmitt (Westoverledingen), Susan Sheehan Gallery (New York), and STPI (Singapore).

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.

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 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
• Untitled (2022), an installation by American artist Henry Taylor, presented by Hauser & Wirth
• A large-scale multimedia installation of soft sculptures and mask costumes by the late, pioneering artist Faith Ringgold, The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro, presented by Goodman Gallery and ACA Galleries. Originally conceived as a performance in 1976, this installation marks the first time Ringgold’s works have been on display at Unlimited
• 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.

Expanded City-Wide Programming

Art Basel’s public sector Parcours will be curated for the first time by Stefanie Hessler, Director of Swiss Institute (SI) in New York, succeeding Samuel Leuenberger, who successfully managed and expanded the sector over the past eight years. Hessler aims to recontextualize Parcours as a curated exhibition that will meander through empty storefronts, a hotel, operational shops, and other urban spaces on Basel’s Clarastrasse, which connects the fairgrounds to the Rhine. Through ambitious projects, many of which will be site-specific and newly created, the sector will explore ideas of transformation and circulation within the realms of trade and globalization, the flow of information, and the varied climates and weathers spanning geographies and generations.

In addition, Art Basel will expand its presence within the city by activating the Hotel Merian as a continuous, around-the-clock venue for artistic events and showcases.

The Film sector, curated by writer and curator Filipa Ramos, returns with a compelling selection of moving
image works, presented throughout the show week at Basel’s Stadtkino.

Free to the public and hosted on Art Basel’s fair ground, the renowned Conversations program will be for the first time curated by Berlin-based writer, editor, and educator Kimberly Bradley.

Parcours

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 features 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 Hotel Merian 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 addresses 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.

For further information, please visit artbasel.com/basel/film.

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. For further information, visit artbasel.com/stories/conversations.

Kabinett

The sector dedicated to curated and thematic presentations featured in a separate section within galleries’ main booths, Kabinett presents 22 projects by 23 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.

Cultural events in Basel

The city of Basel will offer visitors an exceptional program of events and special projects throughout the fair week. Beyond the fair, the city’s premier museums and foundations will host a wide range of outstanding exhibitions. Major shows coinciding with Art Basel include:

• Fondation Beyeler

‘The Summer Show’

With contributions by Michael Armitage, Federico Campagna, Ian Cheng, Marlene Dumas, Frida Escobedo, Peter Fischli, Cyprien Gaillard with Victor Man, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Wade Guyton, Carsten Höller with Adam Haar, Pierre Huyghe, Arthur Jafa, Koo Jeong A, Dozie Kanu, Cildo Meireles, Fujiko Nakaya, Precious Okoyomon, Philippe Parreno, Rachel Rose, Tino Sehgal, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ramdane Touhami und Adrián Villar Rojas, amongst many others.

• Kunstmuseum Basel

‘Dan Flavin: Dedications in Lights’
‘When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting’
‘Ingenious Women: Women Artists and their Companions’
‘Made in Japan: Colored Woodcuts by Hiroshige, Kunisada and Hokusai’

• Kunsthalle Basel

‘Ghislaine Leung’
‘Toyin Ojih Odutola: Ilé Oriaku’
‘Nolan Oswald Dennis: a recurse 4 [3] worlds’

• Kunsthaus Baselland
‘Rewilding: Opening exhibition of the new Kunsthaus Baselland at Dreispitz’

• Museum Tinguely
‘Mika Rottenberg: Antimatter Factory’

• Vitra Design Museum
‘Transform! Designing the Future of Energy’

• Vitra Schaudepot
‘Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse’

ART BASEL in Basel 2024

13 – 16 JUNE

Messeplatz. Basel, Switzerland