Basel Week regulars have come to expect the unexpected from Basel Social Club (BSC), the freewheeling commercial art event that for its fifth edition (until 20 June) has filled an empty office building with not just hundreds of works of art, but a host of enticing experiences including a sauna and a nightclub.
Some BSC exhibitors are also ensuring their offerings go well beyond those of a sterile art fair stand. The Zurich gallery suns.works is staging a raffle, in which for SFr10 (around $12) participants can win a work by Andy Warhol. The framed dollar bill is signed by the artist and also contains an “abstracted drawing of a Campbell soup can”, says the gallery’s founder Lorenzo Bernet. Bernet says that he acquired the work from another gallery, and it was authenticated by the artist’s foundation in the 1980s. Signed dollar bills by Warhol typically fetch $800 to $5,000 at auction.
By yesterday afternoon, more than 100 people had entered the lottery, with up to 2,000 tickets for sale. The lottery will be drawn on 20 June, with proceeds going to BSC and Pro Specie Rara, the Swiss foundation for the protection of endangered crops and farm animals.
Bernet trialled the idea of a lottery at his Zurich gallery earlier this year, and found it was an engaging way to draw in collectors and other visitors. “No one knows what is going to happen to the art world in ten years, but we know it needs to change,” he says. “Basel Social Club is a laboratory and what we need desperately is innovation.”
As an official raffle, the event is under the supervision of the Basel canton police permits and licensing authority. Because of this, Bernet explains, it is being held through an association, rather than his gallery, and he cannot profit from it. To make some cash this week, he has brought along a range of works, including another Warhol, consigned “by a well-connected Swiss contact”, and works by Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Cosima von Bonin and Carsten Höller. The works range from SFr800 to SFr400,000.