The controversy over Anish Kapoor’s vast French horn-esque sculpture sited in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles outside Paris rumbles on. Kapoor told the French press that the vast, 60m-long funnel, entitled Dirty Corner, represents “a queen’s vagina taking power” (but Kapoor says that he was misquoted, telling the BBC that “a work has multiple interpretive possibilities”). The London-based sculptor is showing a golden mirror work with Lisson Gallery at Art Basel which, ahem, suggests multiple interpretive possibilities. Kapoor was at Art Basel on Monday, so we thought we’d ask him about the French “sex organs scandal”. What about the row in France, we tentatively enquired. “Fuck ’em!” was Kapoor’s rather racy and robust riposte.
Porn than meets the eye
At first glance, the artist Tobias Rehberger’s checkered wallpaper at Neugerriemschneider gallery’s booth at Art Basel just looks like colourful bathroom tiling. But look through the lens of a camera phone and a very different picture emerges: a pixelated still of Japanese porn. If the image isn’t immediately apparent, we’ll give you a hint: it involves a woman bent into a compromising position with a Hokusai wave coming towards her. A series of Japanese sex toys placed on nearby pedestals provides another clue that all is not what it first seems.
Pickled offspring
The German artist Gregor Schneider is known for his mischief-making activities and ideas, including his radical plan in 2008 to show a dying person in an exhibition. Visitors to Art Basel can savour examples of Schneider’s maverick works at Galerie Löhrl, which is showing his Cryo-Tank Phoenix. Collectors concerned about advancing years can apparently pickle themselves inside 50 litres of life-preserving fluid. The plot thickens, though. Schneider told us that “this is a tank for a son. I made some [tanks] for the whole family. They are usually filled with liquid nitrogen and stand for a longing for immortality and the fear of death.”
Trigger happy
Visitors to Air de Paris’s booth at Art Basel during Tuesday’s VIP opening were greeted by a soldier lying on the floor while suggestively pulling at the trigger of a gun. Dealers reassured the VIPs that the actor was simply in costume, “reactivating” a photograph by the artist Pierre Joseph, who offers those who collect his work the right to perform the characters he creates—assuming he doesn’t scare them off first.
Throw away the key
The highly prized award for the most innovative marketing material at Art Basel this year goes to the Luxembourg & Dayan gallery, which is handing out lovely, lustrous leaflets as a taster for a major work by Michelango Pistoletto on show at the fair. Collectors and curators can go behind bars on the booth, which is taken over by Pistoletto’s work La Gabbia (the cage) (1967-74). Visitors “will encounter a wall-to-wall cycle of mirrored panels that situates viewers simultaneously within and outside of a prison cell,” the gallery says, effectively putting a host of illustrious art-world figures in the slammer.
Laid back about Leo
Leonardo DiCaprio has become such a regular at art fairs that no one seemed to bat an eyelid when the actor was spotted strolling the halls of Art Basel (along with a burly bodyguard-type asking: “What time will you be done with the Nahmads?”). Thus, no one trailed behind, no one snapped photos; we almost didn’t even write this story. Maybe this means he can finally shave that shaggy beard he has been hiding behind.
Winging it
If you’re a fan of feathered friends, then head to Gregor Staiger. The Zürich gallery has covered the entire floor of its booth in the Statements section with a vast, 36-panel chicken-and-seagull mural by the animal-friendly Swiss artist Nicolas Party. “The subject references both art historical motifs as well as the noisy, bustling character of art fairs,” Staiger says (the phrase “headless chickens” comes to mind). Party also has a track record for painting pooches, having created a series of stools emblazoned with oh-so-cute pictures of beagles and dachshunds. What’s next?
Büchel, a typical Virgo
The Basel-born artist Christoph Büchel is so elusive that the organisers of the Swiss Art Awards worried he might refuse their SFr40,000 prize this year. Assuming, correctly, that he would prefer not to speak at the award ceremony held on Monday, they came up with a win-win solution: he would accept, and the celebrity astrologer Elizabeth Teissier would read his horoscope in lieu of a speech. Unfortunately, Teissier told organisers at the last minute that the stars were not aligned, and therefore she could not travel to Basel after all. Instead, she sent a video, accurately describing Büchel, a Virgo, as someone who enjoys “upsetting the applecart of tradition”. Indeed, the artist made headlines recently when his mosque project for the Venice Biennale was closed by city officials shortly after the event’s opening. But the stars appear to be smiling on Büchel as Teissier foresaw that “particular highlights both in artistic production and in relationships can be expected in September 2015”.
Correction
Yesterday we published a feature on curators’ renewed interest in the conceptual artist, Marcel Broodthaers. Unfortunately, it was an article sent to press in search of an author. Somewhat belatedly, we can reveal his identity as Gareth Harris. The piece was correctly bylined online.