The 42nd edition of Art Basel comes hot on the heels of Hong Kong’s ArtHK (which it now owns, see p81, 26-29 May) and the opening of the Venice Biennale (4 June) but, insists co-director Marc Spiegler, visitors will not have tired of looking at art by then. “There’s a one-week gap in between,” he said.
The main event—the golden-ticket Art Galleries section in Hall 2 of the Messe Basel—houses 239 modern and contemporary galleries, a similar number to last year. Twelve dealers are not returning. These include, most notably, Berlin’s Eigen + Art, whose owner Gerd Harry Lybke was not shy to express his disappointment, London’s Richard Green gallery, Santa Monica’s Patrick Painter gallery and Moscow’s XL. The ten newcomers include the modern and contemporary Vintage Galeria from Budapest—the first Hungarian gallery in the fair—London modern art dealer Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert and New York’s Bortolami Gallery. “This fair is super important to us,” said gallery owner Stefania Bortolami, who showed Richard Aldrich in last year’s Art Statements section. “If you represent international artists, it’s very difficult to survive if you don’t get into Art Basel,” she added. Her gallery is bringing works by Aldrich again this year, as well as two other US artists: Aaron Young and Tom Burr.
This year’s fair sees an overhaul of Art Parcours, which takes new site-specific works into the city and which was launched last year. Run by Jens Hoffmann, the director of the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco, this had an underwhelming start. The Art Basel co-director Annette Schönholzer said that 2010 was a “trial run”, adding that the wet weather didn’t help. However, she says, contemporary projects inside historic buildings were well received, so this year’s Art Parcours takes place in the St Alban area of Basel, one of the oldest parts of the city, replete with early medieval buildings. Entry to the sites will be free (there was a nominal charge last year) and opening hours have been extended (2pm to 10pm; last year there was only evening access). One project is Festum II, 2010, by the Belgian artist Kris Martin who has made around 550kg of bronze confetti (each piece is 5.1mm in diameter and 0.2mm thick), which will be strewn in St Alban’s Church, a former priory built around 1270 (€200,000; Sies + Höke, White Cube galleries). A work by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, arrested in early April, will also feature, says Schönholzer; details were not available as we went to press.
Art Parcours will provide a “strong alternative” to the empty Messeplatz, which will not feature large-scale sculptures as it has done since 2004, says Spiegler. “That space was too big; it was almost impossible to make the art look good there,” he said.
A highlight this year will be a screening of Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”, 2010, his acclaimed three-dimensional film about the Chauvet cave paintings. “It’s a real novelty for us to be showing Art Basel’s first 3D film,” said Schönholzer. This will be shown as part of the Art Film section but in the Cinema Rex, which has the technology required for 3D film.