Art Basel 2026 features 290 galleries – and that’s just the main section, covered here. I could add the Art Unlimited hall, the new ‘0 10’ initiative for digital art, and the 21 Art Parcours projects out and about in the city – plus several other fairs, many museum exhibitions and Basel’s commercial galleries.
How to approach such a glut? Louise Bourgeois gives pretty sensible advice here – ‘Calme Toi’ – in one of the works labelled as a ‘Basel Exclusive’. That’s a new scheme whereby galleries agree not to publicise work in advance, with the aim of reigniting the excitement of discovery at the fair, as opposed to checking off what you’ve already seen on social media. Ideally, such works would also be new to market – as here, three towers straight from the estate via Karsten Greve. One is a bronze with origins as far back as 1949, two are piles of textiles, generating a sense of potential instability as well as recalling the personal history of Bourgeois, whose childhood was traumatised by her tyrannical antique tapestry dealer father’s affair with her governess.
Talking of trauma. Carolina Nitsch had works from the 2009-10 project ‘Do Not Abandon Me’, for which Tracey Emin made additions to Bourgeois’ images of male and female torsos. Could there be a more visceral response to both that personal story and the wider role of the patriarchy than ‘Just Hanging’?
There was plenty of Bourgeois. The living artist who seemed to crop up most was the prolific and ever-inventive Jean-Luc Moulène, whose work I spotted in seven booths. Chantel Crousel – who had my favourite stand – included a curated ‘Kabinett’ (another special category) from which these two collections come. Against the night – in vain, I suspect – we find 140 blue glass eyes: enough to suggest a being who can see but not act on what is seen. The gallery proposes that, ‘pierced by sharp shards of glass’, they suggest ‘fragmentation and a constellation of suspended gazes’ but adds that ‘blue, the colour of dolls, of devotional images, of a certain mass-produced innocence, is the work’s true subject’. The other is the bronze cast of a hand – or rather, as the title states, all 27 of its bones. It’s a memorable play on getting to the structural essence of something that might also serve as a critique of sculptural practices that don’t involve the artist’s hands-on engagement.
One might expect Trump’s excesses to have sparked artistic reaction, but there was little sign of it: Taryn Simon at Almine Rech was an exception. Her latest project looks into the consequences of the 230-odd executive orders signed by the president on regaining office. One was to rename the ‘Department of Defense’ to the ‘Department of War’. Congress has yet to ratify this, but it has been implemented anyway, and relevant official merchandise has already been made, such as the glass pictured by Simon. The Pentagon’s products come with options for personalisation, such as inscribing names – and one of the choices available here is to have bullet inserted,,,
There were more works addressing the politics of the personal zone. Digitalisation, for example, was economically skewered by German artist Asta Gröting at Carlier / Gerbauer. If this heart appears wounded, for all its stainless steeliness, that is offset by the fact that it looks like an emoji, evoking the means through which many aspects of relationships are conducted nowadays. It also suggested to me the now-outdated procedure of Intracardiac injection, further emphasising how time has moved on.
A real heart would have added different drama to the booth. If there was one elsewhere, I missed it: the closest I found was in Tate-planned Ana Mendieta’s photograph at Spanish gallery Prats Nogueras Blanchard. It was created in a niche in the colonial Cuilápam church in Oaxaca. She bought an animal’s heart and thin branches to hold the piece upright in a niche where it symbolized the bleeding heart of Jesus, a popular motif in Mexican Catholic worship.
Top image: Work by Puppies Puppies, 2024, and below: Jade Guanaro Kuriki Olivo attending to it
One decision in booth design is: do you go for a dramatic centrepiece, or group works with more even initial impact? Balice Hertling opted for the former via a self-portrait of Puppies Puppies – ie trans woman Jade Guanaro Kuriki Olivo – based on a 3D scan of her naked body, which the artist made up daily. The impact was to the point, as the figure aims to make proudly overt something that has long been pushed towards invisibility. Engraved on the work’s brass base is a single word, ‘woman’, but the title is more prolix: 360 words starting with ‘Please do not abbreviate or shorten this title’. I don’t have room to obey, but the whole appears at the end of this article.
What to buy, though? I didn’t have my wallet with me, but a case could be made that £4m was cheap for a Twombly of this size – 1.4 m high – as offered by Ben Brown. That said, it isn’t easily recognised as such, given the unusual format and restrained language: that attracts me, but maybe not the market. The shape suggests a sacred setting, and that’s relevant: the motif is the rays of light emanating from the Madonna in Renaissance paintings.
There were plenty of animals in the fair, direct or – as here – implied. This looked like a moth denatured by its being composed of the darkly tinted glass used to shield limousines from external gazes. That is relevant, as is the viewer is reflected in its technological mirror, but Eigen + Art also cites a reference to ‘the surfaces of mobile phone and computer screens, and the worlds made visible through them — worlds that have today become part of our everyday interior landscape’ – fogged up as they may be.
Since 1989 Bruce Nauman has procured the readymade taxidermy moulds used to provide an interior body for skins and furs as alien stand-ins for the animals in his morbid ensembles. At Marian Goodman Gallery, three such foxes – common on his ranch – are ensnared by wire into an unnatural engagement, the violence of which is emphasised by the presence of hammers. They’re free to move, but the elements might also be read as a still life of objects and the implied stuffed animals.
I liked two works which brought stone and paint together unusually. First, a painting at Warsaw’s Foksal Gallery Foundation by the young Pole Karol Palczak that shares something with Nauman’s sculpture. The scene was staged on white marble like that onto which it was then painted: dead eels, the ribcage of a fallow deer, and blood (actually borscht mixed with starch to imitate it). Aside from the imitative logic, Palczak finds the surface enhances the work’s inner light. ‘For me’, he says, ‘this is an abstract composition based somewhat on living matter’ – albeit combining still life traditions with suggestions of subconscious anxieties and brutal, yet undefined, events.
Second, a new work at Hauser & Wirth from the very multi-disciplinary Anri Sala brought earth and sky together through the simple yet effective means of finding clouds in rock. The title refers to the place where Sala took a photograph of the cloud. He has painted them as a fresco, so that the marble inlay connects to the marble dust traditionally included in the rough ground on which the finer plaster is applied. That results in a dizzying conjunction of timescales, from geological to historic painting to photographic to meteorological.
I seem to have got this far without a British artist. So here’s Gillian Wearing wearing a book in what looks like a prescient critique of current reading trends. This, Maureen Paley’s ‘Basel exclusive’ choice, ups the category’s ante by being completely unseen previously, even though it is almost forty years old. Moreover, you can see a sculpture by Rebecca Warren from 2013 in the background: that has been exhibited but has come from the studio new to market: Maureen told me that she’s wanted it all that time, but had to wait… Her gallery wins my exclusive prize!
* Title of Puppies Puppies sculpture: “Please do not abbreviate or shorten this title • it is just as important as the work itself • This work is evidence • a mark • that I fought • through my expression • through my voice • through my protests • for people to acknowledge • that I am a woman • my chromosomes • my genitalia • the sex I was assigned at birth do not determine my gender • they do not make me any less of a woman • OUR EXISTENCE AS TRANS WOMEN • TRANS PEOPLE • IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE • WE SHOULD NOT BE TREATED AS LESS THAN • WE DESERVE RESPECT AND UNDERSTANDING • WE DESERVE TO HAVE HEALTHCARE • WE DESERVE TO HAVE HOUSING • WE DESERVE TO WALK OUT THE DOOR WITHOUT THE FEAR OF HARM OR DEATH • WE DESERVE TO BE OURSELVES • WE DESERVE TO LAVISH IN WHO WE ARE • and we deserve equity not just equality • I learned from my Trancestors • to not shrink in the face of violence • erasure • discrimination • for so many trans people • our starting line is not the same as our cis counterparts • this should be acknowledged and accounted for • there’s a reason we aren’t in many slightly older art history books • there’s a reason I never felt mirrored when studying art • we were never let into any of these spaces (not that long ago) • with Sylvia Rivera as my guiding light • I will demand what I deserve • I will be vocal • I won’t be stepped on • I am a Puerto Rican Japanese Indigenous Trans Woman • I am made in the image of a higher spirit/entity • my body was shaped • molded • and my existence is art • (as are the other trans people on this planet) • it’s quite frankly a miracle that I’m here today • a brain tumor survivor • a rape survivor • a survivor of all that went against me • and every obstacle • my presence • is in this sculpture • performing in my absence • I am a woman • and no one can ever take that from me (this is my body being handed over to many people • to be used • to be sold • to be exhibited • to be exchanged • and this is not lost on me • it’s a part of the work)
Paul Carey-Kent selects a ‘Gallery of the Month’, a ‘Show of the Month’, a ‘Work of the Month’ and a ‘Book of the Month’ for his weekly column in FAD. A collection of previous gallery columns, ‘Paul’s Galleries To Go’, is available from FAD Bazaar.
