A look back at the Basel contemporary art fair, which took place from June 12th to 18th, while awaiting the arrival of Paris+ by Art Basel
from October 18 to 22.

284 galleries, more than 4,000 artists from five continents, 82,000 visitors, a Rothko offered for $60 million… the figures for the world's largest contemporary art fair ("the most important art event in the world," according to its director Noah Horowitz) are staggering. Here is a small selection of the 76 large-scale installations and performances offered in the Unlimited sector, showcasing the most contemporary creations.

Seen this winter at the Continua Gallery in the Marais district of Paris (see Acumen no. 28), the latest video by Franco-Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed set the tone for this second post-COVID edition, a blend of effervescence and restraint. Projected onto a 12-meter-long screen prominently displayed in the main hall of the Unlimited space, reserved for very large-format works, the film caused a sensation. An allegory of the end of a world, of our world in decline? It borrows its title, Jam Proximus Ardet, from Virgil's Aeneid (when the hero realizes that the city of Troy is in flames) and places us face to face with the image of the sea and a burning ship slowly approaching, while we discover at its prow the artist standing, arms crossed impassively… Unbearable impassivity condemning all indifference towards the sea of ​​tragedies that the Mediterranean has become?

APOCALYPSES

“Sea Never Dries,” proclaimed Ghanaian artist Serge Attukwei Clottey, with, as a pious wish, an immense suspended wave composed of fragments of yellow plastic water containers. A work both dazzling and chilling, like the installation by Chinese artist He Xiangyu entitled “Inherited Wounds”: three rows of graffiti-covered wooden school chairs, lined up in front of their miniature reproductions. Guilt, anger, unease… no one could pass by with a light heart. A strange feeling of embarrassment mixed with curiosity and somewhat forced amusement also seized the visitors invited to lie down on the leather and metal hammocks suspended by chains by Italian artist Monica Bonvicini (presented by the Peter Kilchmann Gallery). Entitled Never Again, this pseudo-rest area with its S&M undertones disrupts behavioral conventions and traps visitors in their own contradictions. This approach can be compared to the video installation How Did He Die by Diamond Stingily (born in 1990 in Chicago and represented by the Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery). By placing a grid in front of the projection screen showing young girls in a schoolyard, Stingily confines the viewer's gaze, making the confinement of the filmed community all the more palpable.

WANDERINGS

Another video installation capable of unsettling both our preconceptions and our senses, Anne Imhof's Jester (Buchholz and Sprüth Magers galleries) was one of the highlights of Basel Unlimited. Composed from several performances filmed during her 2021 exhibition "Still Lifes" at the Palais de Tokyo, this hour-long video piece, projected on two screens, can appear as a kind of dream or illusion. We see dancers and performers moving through a twilight atmosphere, sometimes violently, sometimes in slow motion, following the intensity of the music and occasionally emitting inaudible cries… A jarring choreography evoking aimlessness and chaos. Isn't it on ruins that we build a new world?
1 Painting presented by the Acquavella Gallery of New York

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