Editor’s pick: Art Basel 2020 a collection of our favourite galleries selected by Editor in Chief Alice Zucca

The online version of the famous art fair opened yesterday to the public. Whilst no physical show will take place in Basel this year, you will still be able to discover over 4,000 exceptional artworks in the Online Viewing Rooms, presented by 282 of the world’s leading galleries from 35 different countries. As said by Marc Spiegel, Global Director of the prestigious event, one of the defining characteristics of Art Basel is the depth of historical material, for example this year you can find artworks by Donald Judd, Josef Albers, Louise Nevelson, Lygia Pape, as well as a huge selection of fantastic pieces from some of the artists most active today. There are also dozens of events everyday, talks between gallerists and artists, screenings of documentary films and live conferences.

The Online Viewing Rooms are full of high quality and interactive content and they will run from June 19, 1pm CET to June 26, 1pm CET.

Here’s a selection of some of the best galleries chosen by our Editor in Chief Alice Zucca.

You can check them all going to the Art Basel website.

Mai 36 Galerie

Artist’s Artist

Artist’s artists are influential to their peers, curators and a circle of aware collectors. They have a high level of integrity; significant bodies of work and are critical to their community. The term „artist’s artist“ applies to figures whose work possesses a strange brilliance or strong foresightedness that their fellow art community cannot resist. Some of the artists experience fame and recognition but, just as often, they are heavily underrated and their time is still to come.

With selected works by: FRANZ ACKERMANN – RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER – JOHN BALDESSARI – GENERAL IDEA – PETER HUJAR – RITA McBRIDE – MATT MULLICAN – BRUCE NAUMAN – MANFRED PERNICE – MAGNUS PLESSEN – THOMAS RUFF – PAUL THEK – DAAN VAN GOLDEN – LAWRENCE WEINER – RÉMY ZAUGG

Von Bartha

The Backward Glance can be a Glimpse into the Future

Von Bartha presents leading contemporary artists in the gallery’s programme such as Terry Haggerty, Landon Metz, and Superflex, alongside a historical section of the gallery’s modern artists. Von Bartha‘s 50-year history can be traced through artworks from its four most important influences: Swiss Concrete Art (Camille Graeser); Hungarian Avant Garde (László Moholy-Nagy); 20th century Swedish art (Olle Baertling); and major works from the Latin American art movements Arte Concreto Invencion and Arte Madí. These historic pieces are accompanied by works from contemporary artists such as Andrew Bick, Imi Knoebel, and Sarah Oppenheimer, highlighting the influence that the gallery’s modern roster has had on many living artists. Contemporary works such as Imi Knoebel’s ‘Sommer’ (2009) are seen in context with modern works such as ‘Komposition’ (1935) by László Moholy-Nagy. Von Bartha’s online viewing room at Art Basel takes its title from the upcoming group exhibition of the same name, curated by Beat Wismer and taking place at the gallery’s Basel space, 5 September – 7 November 2020, on the subject of von Bartha’s 50-year history.

Exhibited artists: – Olle Baertling – Barry Flanagan – Camille Graeser – Terry Haggerty – Imi Knoebel – Landon Metz – László Moholy-Nagy – Sarah Oppenheimer – Francisco Sierra – Carmelo Arden Quin – Superflex – Bernar Venet – Beat Zoderer

Galleri Nicolai Wallner

For Art Basel’s Online Viewing Room, Galleri Nicolai Wallner has focused this presentation on the works of Alexander Tovborg, David Shrigley, Elmgreen & Dragset, Jeppe Hein, Jose Dávila and Julie Lænkholm. The presentation centres itself around the idea of connection. Through portraiture, reflective and playful materials, shared narratives and the idea of suspense, the chosen artworks carefully and poetically create moments through which we are given the space to explore our sense of self.

Esther Schipper

PS81E

PS81E brings together the works of: Matti Braun, AA Bronson and Reima Hirvonen, Angela Bulloch, Etienne Chambaud, Simon Fujiwara, Ryan Gander, Ann Veronica Janssens, Gabriel Kuri, Jac Leirner, Roman Ondak, Philippe Parreno, Ugo Rondinone, Anri Sala, and Karin Sander.

Galleria Franco Noero

Some works to hold on to for the future

Taking a cue from Darren Bader’s 109 things to begin a new civilization, a sculpture realized for our last exhibition with the artist and included in this presentation, Franco Noero Gallery wishes to create a dialogue among a series of works which reaffirm the idea that art aims to go beyond the present, reaching for a universality which naturally coincides with faith in the future. The scale of the works presented covers a wide range, from the intimate to the nearly monumental, showing the capacity of the artists to express themselves in a variety of compelling, and perhaps unexpected, ways.

This is altered within the online exhibition space, where proportions are hard to discern. The digital then becomes an opportunity to focus on the strength of a work’s details, the smaller and the more subtle features that may be overlooked when experiencing an artwork in person. Works that are meaningful, which help to portray the present while offering an opportunity for interpretation in anticipation for times to come.

Featuring works by Darren Bader, Lothar Baumgarten, Pablo Bronstein, Sam Falls, Mario García Torres, Arturo Herrera, Gabriel Kuri, Jac Leirner, Marepe, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mike Nelson, Henrik Olesen, Simon Starling, Tunga, Francesco Vezzoli

Sean Kelly

Sean Kelly Gallery presents a carefully curated selection of works that reveals the rich spectrum of aesthetic tendencies expressed by artists with whom they work, including Marina Abramović, Jose Dávila, Candida Höfer, Rebecca Horn, Idris Khan, Joseph Kosuth, Hugo McCloud, and Shahzia Sikander, amongst others, and offers a particular focal point on Kehinde Wiley’s monumental sculpture, Rumors of War, 2019. Our presentation includes historically important works by iconic artists Abramović, Horn, and Kosuth, as well as exciting works by mid-career artists such as Callum Innes and Mariko Mori, and compelling new works by Julian Charrière, Hugo McCloud and Sam Moyer. Abramović’s Self Portrait with Skeleton, 2003, is linked to her performance Nude with Skeleton, and is one of her most iconic images.

Horn’s Der Sonnenseufzer, 2006, which translates as “The Sun Sigh,” is a classic example of the artist’s sculpture and was included in her retrospective at the Museum Tinguely in 2019. In this work, the violin plays three haunting sounds, representing two contained worlds of light and dark.

Kosuth’s Titled (A.A.I.A.I.)’ [begin], [middle], [end], Webster’s N.D., 1968, is an exceptionally rare example from his “Definitions,” series, a work whose apparent graphic simplicity belies its unmistakable philosophical and psychological complexity.

Jose Dávila’s Untitled (Les Ménines),2020, similarly engages a deconstructed graphic sensibility to riff on iconic moments from the history of art.

Callum Innes’s Exposed Painting Quinacridone Gold, 2020, suggests a freezing in time, or the momentary arrest of an ongoing process, whereas Idris Khan’s Two Bar Rhythm, 2020, engages a series of densely layered texts that speak to the metaphysical collapse of time into singular moments.

While these artist’s works express the timelessness of art, Kehinde Wiley’s monumental sculpture Rumors of War, 2019, which was unveiled in Times Square in September 2019, before moving to its final home at the entrance to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond in December is decidedly of the moment, having quickly become an iconic emblem of the Black Lives Matter movement. Today this sculpture stands as an untarnished beacon to the future, as the very works that it was created in response to — the numerous memorials to the Confederacy lining Richmond’s Monument Avenue — are being permanently removed.

Galerie Thomas Schulte

Conference of the Birds

The second iteration of the Art Basel Online Viewing Rooms is happening in challenging times of changing perceptions and questions about values and virtues; questions comprehensively addressed in Farid Al-Din Attar’s wonderful epic twelfth century poem “The Conference of the birds”. This poem lends its title to our selection of works which themselves resemble a conference of birds, whose stories—like Attar’s parables—“inhabit the imagination” and whose “wisdom can trickle down into the heart” as the poet Sholeh Wolpé described it. In her words, “they are being absorbed by each of us in a different way, reflecting on our ideals, ideas, our fears and anxieties.” And they ask us to open up to the truth.

303 Gallery

Selected Works

Featuring works by: Doug Aitken, Nina Canell, Sam Falls, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Mary Heilmann, Jeppe Hein, Karen Kilimnik, Alicja Kwade, Tala Madani, Florian Maier-Aichen, Nick Mauss, Sue Williams, and more.

303 Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in New York. First established by owner and director Lisa Spellman in 1984, the gallery currently represents over thirty international artists.

Paula Cooper Gallery

Paula Cooper Gallery presents significant works of painting, sculpture, photography and mixed-media from the gallery’s landmark program of artists including Carl Andre, Tauba Auerbach, Jennifer Bartlett, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sarah Charlesworth, Mark di Suvero, Dan Flavin, Charles Gaines, Ja’Tovia Gary, Julian Lethbridge, Sol LeWitt, David Novros, Walid Raad, Joel Shapiro, and Jackie Winsor.

Galleria Continua

The Joy of Art

Celebrating thirty years this year, Galleria Continua remains faithful to the belief that art is a field of relations and encounters in continuous evolution. Continua is committed to making art through shared moments of exchange that are capable of taking over space, time and human thought, no matter how challenging it might be.

A selection of engaging works by artists such as Kader Attia, Daniel Buren, Hans Op de Beeck and Pascale Marthine Tayou and Nari Ward, to name just a few, as well as a compelling 1970s work by Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Galerie Eva Presenhuber

Galerie Eva Presenhuber participates in the second edition of Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms, presenting new and significant works by gallery artists Jean-Marie Appriou, Joe Bradley, Peter Fischli / David Weiss, Alex Hubbard, Shara Hughes, Wyatt Kahn, Karen Kilimnik, Adam Pendleton, Tobias Pils, Ugo Rondinone, Tschabalala Self, Steven Shearer, Michael Williams, and Sue Williams.

Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi

There is no world left to live in

There is no world left to live in

I WANT A NEW ONE

WE WANT A NEW ONE

Tanya Leighton

Tanya Leighton’s Online Viewing Room features fifteen new and recent works across a variety of media and scales that would have been the foundation of the gallery’s presentation at Art Basel this June. Works are presented by artists including Math Bass, Antonio Ballester Moreno, Brian Belott, Pavel Büchler, Alejandro Cesarco, David Diao, Aleksandra Domanović, Esteban Jefferson, Oliver Laric, Elizabeth McIntosh, Kate Mosher Hall, Oliver Osborne and Hiroka Yamashita.