[ad_1]
The scene on the Messeplatz as the fair began.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
At 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the lines on the Messeplatz to pass through metal detectors to enter Art Basel must have been at least 30 people long, but they moved quickly. (The Swiss security guards—many of whom wear charming berets—work with great efficiency.) Inside, nearly 300 exhibitors were aiming to sell art, and their efforts constitute an absolute embarrassment of riches for all those in the Swiss city along the Rhine. There are works on offer by big names, new names, and recently resurfaced names. There is something for everyone.
By noon, the aisles and booths were thrumming with activity, as people snapped photos, made handshake agreements, snapped more photos, and then ducked out into the courtyard of the Messe Basel convention center to buy a veal sausage, some oysters, and maybe another glass of Champagne, perhaps in hopes of keeping the buzz alive from the traditional Champagne breakfast that marks the start of Basel’s opening day. Below, some of the highlights from the fair, which are too numerous to even begin listing here.
-
- ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
One of three doors by Jef Geys on view at Galerie Max Mayer of Dusseldorf. These works were once shown in the storied 1986 exhibition “Chambers d’amid,” which took place in Ghent, Belgium, with work installed in a variety of domestic dwellings. Geys, who died earlier this year at the age of 83, presented them in working-class homes in the city.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Avery Singer at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, of New York and Rome, whose booth sports Thomas Bayrle wallpaper. Another section has glowing yellow walls that bear works by Karl Holmqvist, Alex Katz, and more.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Blum & Poe, which has galleries in Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo, is showing a 1974 Robert Colescott, A Winning Combination, and a 2015–18 Henry Taylor, OXXO—Somewhere in Mexico but close to the BORDER.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Miriam Cahn, a highlight of the last Documenta 14, with a bevy of ghostly paintings at Meyer Riegger, of Berlin and Karlsruhe, Germany.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
High drama at the booth of Berlin’s neugerriemschneider, where Rirkrit Tiravanija untitled 2012 (freiheit kann man nicht simulieren), 2012, is taking up a nice chunk of space. (The parenthetical translates from the German to “FREEDOM CANNOT BE SIMULATED”.)
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
- ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
London’s Victoria Miro gallery has gone with a three-person booth, with work on view by Yayoi Kusama (pictured here), Sarah Sze, and Adriana Varejão.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
When it comes to scrappy elegance, it’s hard to beat this year’s outing from Cologne’s Galerie Gisela Capitain. From left to right here, it’s works by Charline von Heyl, Martin Kippenberger, and Seth Price.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
- Galerie Nordenhake, of Berlin and Stockholm, has devoted one room of its booth to a quartet of paintings by the late Alan Uglow. Here are two of them.
-
- ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Berlin’s Galerie Neu has this 2007 Cosima von Bonin, Marathon (#1), 2007.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
The booth of Long March Space from Beijing.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
It’s always great when a two-person outing sees a pair of power players bringing the best out of each other. In the case of the booth from New York’s Bureau gallery, it’s Matt Hoyt (the sculptures) and Patricia Treib (the paintings), and their lines and curves are singing together in perfect, intricate harmony.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Frenetic, the-club-is-going-wild color from Yann Herstberger, who was born in France and works in Mexico City. OMR gallery, also of Mexico City, brought his work to the fair.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Monica De Cardenas, which has galleries in Milan and Zuoz, Switzerland, near the country’s eastern border with Italy, has a full booth of shaped works by New York’s Alex Katz.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
From Athens, Kalfayan Galleries is showing a number of paintings—sexy, touching, tender—by Yannis Tsarouchis, the late Greek painter who was one of the stars of Documenta 14.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Every day over the course of 2014, the New York–based artist Yuji Agematsu, who seems worthy of the label of living legend at this point, picked up bits of detritus from the streets and assembled them in the little plastic bags seen here. It’s a calendar of a year spent paying careful attention, of finding unusual beauty in all sorts of things. They came to the fair courtesy of Miguel Abreu Gallery, of New York.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
A closeup of the Agematsu.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Ed Atkins fans, take note: London gallery Cabinet has a new five-minute video by the British artist on view, and it concerns—speaking very loosely—the meticulous construction of sandwiches that, as you can see in this instance, include some unorthodox ingredients.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Whew, now I am feeling good. This is Richard Hawkins at New York’s Greene Naftali, and it brings to mind David Hockney’s famous The Room, Tarzana (1967), with the angle of view shifted slightly, revealing a lover outside on the balcony, enjoying a breath of fresh air. A major painting.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
You have to love Air de Paris, which hails from the French capital city. It’s the rare gallery that has both unimpeachable conceptual bona fides and an absolute love of color—as interested in the pleasures of the mind as those of the eye. In any sense, this sculpture by Dutch artist Lily van der Stokker stuns, and it’s in great company alongside pieces by Ben Kinmont, Thomas Bayrle, Jef Geys, and more.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Berlin’s Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler is showing this energetic Anna Uddenberg, gloriously titled Disconnect (airplane mode), 2018.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Doreen Garner’s Red Rack of those Ravaged and Unconsenting (2018), whose unflinching presentation in the booth of New York gallery JTT concerns J. Marion Sims, the New York doctor who performed experiments on female slaves in the 19th century without anesthesia, and whose statue was recently removed from a site on Fifth Avenue on the border of Central Park. Elsewhere, she has reproduced excerpts of his writings, highlighting passages and smearing parts of them with her menstrual blood and urine.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Sturdy, shimmering elegance: ektor garcia at Glasgow’s Mary Mary gallery.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
An impressively spare presentation by New York’s Essex Street gallery: just a handful of modestly sized, deadpan, oddly intimate photos by Sara Deraedt, one of a vacuum cleaner on display, the others of a brush attachment. It’s cleanliness and commerce seen near at hand, skeptically, though not without a certain understanding.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
A closeup of the Deraedt photos.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Betty Woodman, the superb ceramist and colorist who died at the start of the year at the age of 87, is behind this arrangement, dated 2017, at New York’s Salon 94 gallery.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
London’s Sadie Coles HQ is offering up these three Sarah Lucas pieces along with a typically enigmatic wall piece by a fellow Briton, Helen Marten.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Nicole Eisenman goes big at Anton Kern gallery, of New York, with this scene of drone piloting, horseback riding, and light shining. Hot tip: I spotted some of her wall pieces—woodblocks used for making prints that were recently shown in Dallas—in the gallery’s storage room at Basel. Kern also has a huge painting of a foot (that almost appears to have a single toe) by the great Ellen Berkenblit, which I strongly endorse.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
More Eisenman! This time at Berlin’s Barbara Weiss gallery. It’s from this year, and it’s titled Drone Painting #4.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
47 Canal, which calls New York’s Chinatown home, has in its booth a piquant melange of gallery artists including, left to right here, Janiva Ellis, Antoine Catala, Josh Kline (at front), and Stewart Uoo.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Veteran New York artist B. Wurtz—a master of remaking or just reconfiguring everyday materials like plastic bags, socks, and shoelaces—has a full wall in the booth of London gallery Kate MacGarry for his Pan Paintings (2018). Wurtz will open a show with the Public Art Fund in his hometown in August, and this a very welcome appetizer to that main event.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
B. Wurtz viewed up close.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Marian Goodman, of New York, Paris, and London, has this 2018 Nairy Baghramian hanging prettily next to a 2016 Julie Mehretu.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
- ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
- ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Sprüth Magers, which boasts galleries or offices in Berlin, Cologne, London, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, has a potent double Cady Noland moment, with Patty Hearst (1989) on the wall and an untitled sculpture from 1989–92 on the ground.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
An unbelievable work at Peter Freeman, of New York and Paris: Richard Serra’s 1986 T with Two. Were it not quite so cumbersome, I might try to make off with it.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
No art fair and no Hauser & Wirth booth should be without a Philip Guston painting. This one is titled Crescent, 1976.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
David Zwirner, of New York, London, and, as of March, Hong Kong, bringing the Alice Neel heat. The works are dated 1971 and 1969.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Heavenly latex and gold leaf on canvas: General Idea’s Virgo: The Artist’s Conception of Miss General Idea (1984), on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash of New York.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Here, at Acquavella Galleries, are a wonderfully strange late de Kooning (it almost seems to be in the process of being erased) is paired with a choice Tom Wesselmann. While I was there a prominent collector I will not name wandered in and exclaimed, “Fuck, that is great Wesselmann.” Hear, hear.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Two Palms has exquisitely crafted prints from Jeff Koons’s “Gazing Ball” series, which he makes from high-res photographs of iconic works by Gauguin, Rubens, and more, and then adores with a polished blue circle—and it also has these joyous Stanley Whitney pieces.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Brooke Alexander’s treasure-filled booth includes this selection of prints by Bruce Nauman (nicely tying in to the artist’s retrospective at the Schaulager nearby) and, in the background, Donald Judd.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Print powerhouse Gemini G.E.L. has a tranche of John Baldessari works at its booth, including this number titled, straightforwardly, TRUFFLE BUTTER (2018). Since seeing it I have had that great Nicki Minaj song of the same name stuck in my head. It also feels like a kind of sly reference to Basel itself, where everyone is on the hunt for truffles—and alive to the pleasures of decadent truffle butter.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
One of the real standouts at this year’s Art Basel is the showstopper of a display assembled by Paris’s Galerie 1900–2000, which is chockablock with Dadaism and Surrealism and includes this very fine pairing of a 2010 Cindy Sherman toile-like wallpaper piece with eight drawings by the one and the only Francis Picabia. What a thing. (More on this booth later.)
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
A 1964 Sadamasa Motonaga titled Work 145 (1964), which is being sold by Paris’s Natalie Seroussi.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
New York and London dealer Skarstedt came to the fair brandishing this classic late Willem de Kooning and this pleasantly goofy Thomas Schütte.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
New York’s Franklin Parrasch Gallery has a tasty little survey in its booth of the still-underrated California giant John McLaughlin, whose 2016–17 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art painfully did not travel to New York. Not pictured: a three-panal monochromatic work—all white—from 1971, which is the only triptych he ever made.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert of London has given over its booth to British Pop—and how! There’s Joe Tilson, Antony Donaldson, and a positively radiant Allen Jones painting of legs in high heels that appear to be descending sculptural steps that project off the canvas.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
For scrappy elegance it’s hard to beat this year’s outing from Cologne’s Galerie Gisela Capitain—from left to right here it’s Charline von Heyl, Martin Kippenberger, and Seth Price.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
-
-
Lelong Editions has an absolutely stunning booth of prints and fabric works by the 93-year-old Lebanese-American artist Etal Adnan—as refreshing as a cold glass of water during a hike on a hot day.
ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
Copyright 2018, Art Media ARTNEWS, llc. 110 Greene Street, 2nd Fl., New York, N.Y. 10012. All rights reserved.
[ad_2]
Source link