Art Basel returns in-person at Messe Basel September 24—26. The 2021 edition features 272 international galleries presenting a range from rare historical pieces to new works by contemporary artists. Presented with support from UBS, the fair—also accessible through Art Basel Live and the Online Viewing Room—encompasses several platforms, including the Galleries, Features, Edition, Statements, and Unlimited sectors, and more.
This year’s fair welcomes names from 33 countries and territories, including 24 first-time presenters like Bodega, Company Gallery, Kasmin, and Venus Over Manhattan from New York, Isla Flotante and waldengallery from Buenos Aires, Paris’s Galerie Jérôme Poggi and Loevenbruck, the London and Milan-based Cardi Gallery, Berlin’s Lars Friedrich, and Edouard Malingue Gallery of Hong Kong. Meanwhile, fairgoers might recognize returning names like Acquavella Galleries, Templon, White Cube, Peres Projects, Victoria Miro, Perrotin, Gagosian, Gió Marconi, Matthew Marks Gallery, Galerie Thomas Zander, and David Zwirner.
© Art Basel
In Giovanni Carmine’s first year curating the Unlimited sector, fairgoers will find 62 large-scale projects including Urs Fischer’s Untitled (Bread House) with Jeffrey Deitch, Sfeir-Semler Gallery presenting a work by Etel Adnan, and Repeating the Obvious by Carrie Mae Weems, on view with Jack Shainman Gallery and Galerie Barbara Thumm. Other highlights to look out for include a trompe-l’œil painting by David Hockney and a textile installation from Marion Baruch, eachpresented by Gray, and Robert Rauschenberg’s 1984 painting Rollings (Salvage), on view with Thaddaeus Ropac.
Juan Downey, “Untitled (Continental Drift Series),” 1988, © Courtesy 1 Mira Madrid.
Not to be missed are the 20 site-specific installations and performances making up the Parcours platform, curated by Samuel Leuenberger. Within the theme “Can We Find Happiness Together Again?,” visitors will find works across the city’s public and private exhibition spaces, including a composition by Jason Dodge with Galleria Franco Noero at Kunstmuseum Basel; artworks and performances by Claudia Comte at the Stadtcasino, Basel, presented with Gladstone Gallery and König Galerie; and the large-scale sculpture Neopets by Bunny Rogers, presented by Société.
Other happenings to look out for include a roster of screenings curated by Filipa Ramos for the Film program, conversations between names like Philip Ursprung, Daniel Buren, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and the Messeplatz platform, featuring two special interventions by the artists Monster Chetwynd and Cecilia Bengolea.
Claudia Comte, “After Nature,” 2021, © Courtesy of the Artist and Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Augustus Serapinas, “Mudmen,” 2020; photo by Hedi Jaansoo,
© courtesy of the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art.
