Kevin Beasley, Untitled (Shrink) (2016), via Casey Kaplan

As summer gets into full swing, the art world once again flocks to the Swiss city of Basel for the flagship entry of the Art Basel fair, which once again sets up shop at the expansive Messe Basel, near the banks of the Rhine.  This year’s edition continues the event’s reputation for capitalizing on the space and scale afforded it in the Messe’s impressive exhibition halls, bringing 280 galleries from around the globe, and showing over 4,000 artists inside its spacious confines. (more…)

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Drawing Restraint 15 (2007) by Matthew Barney, Photo: Neville Wakefield, via Schaulager

Currently on view at Schaulager in Basel is “Drawing Restraint” presenting sixteen performances by American artist Matthew Barney. In each enactment the artist leaves traces in an atmosphere of self-inflicted psychological and physical restraints. The result of such performances are sculptures, vitrines, drawings and videos all of which are juxtaposed against North Renaissance art.

More text and related links after the jump…. (more…)

van Gogh’s “Ernte in der Provence” (1888), at Kunstmuseum Basel.

The Kunstmuseum Basel is currently showing works by the master painter Vincent van Gogh.  Seventy paintings, both better- and lesser-known, are featured in this first large-scale showing of exclusively landscape works by the artist.  The van Gogh paintings will be accompanied by a biographical video on the artist as well as forty landscape pieces by his contemporaries.  The intended result gives patrons a look at van Gogh’s contribution to the evolution of technique and concept in landscape work. The show closes on September 27.

Related links:
Kunstmuseum Basel
Switzerland’s art blockbuster of the year: Van Gogh landscapes [GenevaLunch]

Vernissage has video of the exhibition.

More images and story after the jump…

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Wolfgang Tillmans, ‘Anders Pulling Splinter from his Foot.’ 2004. Via Design Boom.

Currently on exhibit at Schaulager in Basel are approximately 200 paintings and sculptures dating from the 15oo’s to the present, taken from the collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel.   Alongside the works are thirty pieces from the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation and several works from private collections. Schaulager is meant to function as a kind of new form of art institution, “one that is neither museum nor traditional repository,”  but a “viewing warehouse,” with optimal climatic conditions where art can be simultaneously stored, preserved and viewed all at once.  Curated by Theodora Vischer, the current exhibit juxtaposes old and new artworks and was carefully selected and arranged.  The installation was “not produced based on the model of a classical museum hanging.  Rather, the result was a different, new narrative, or better: an essay of pictures.  It evolved, image by image, by means of diverse and unexpected relationships and numerous dialogues that ensued between the works, until finally the essay ‘Holbein to Tillmans’ took shape.”

Rodney Graham’s, ‘Allegory of Folly: Study for an Equestrian Monument in the Form of a Wind Vane,’ from 2005 alludes to an earlier work; ‘Praise of Folly,’ by Erasmus of Rotterdam, which was illustrated by Hans Holbein the Younger, a German artist from the 16th Century. Via DesignBoom.

Related Links:
Holbien to Tillmans [Schaulager]
Video of Holbein to Tillmans Exhibition. [Schaulager]
Holbein to Tillmans at Schaulager, Basel [Vernissage TV]
Holbein to Tillmans Exhibition at Schaulager [Design Boom]
Holbein to Tillmans- Prominentt Guests from the Kunstmuseum Basel [The ArtNetwork]

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