Visitors to Art Basel’s flagship fair in Switzerland this month (June 15-18) already have plenty to navigate, including the main Galleries sector with its 285 dealers, the Unlimited sector (for large works), Feature (for art historical projects), and Parcours (artworks in the city center), plus the film program.
This year, a new sector is joining the fair—Kabinett, a selection of thematic and curated presentations that has been part of the Miami Beach and Hong Kong editions, is coming to Basel for the first time.
“The inspiration for Kabinett is to offer a deep dive into specific themes and artists through thoughtfully curated presentations within the galleries’ booths,” Vincenzo de Bellis, Director, Fairs and Exhibition Platforms said in a statement. “While the main sector is where galleries traditionally exhibit the full range of their program, Kabinett allows them to provide a dedicated focus on particular positions—and offers visitors surprise encounters and new discoveries.”
In all, there will be 13 presentations within the booths, organized by 14 galleries (two are pairing up on one display). The participating galleries are: Air de Paris, Casas Riegner, Mehdi Chouakri, gb agency, Alexander Gray, Jenkins Johnson, Anton Kern, Kurimanzutto, Meyer Riegger/Franco Noero, Perrotin, Cristea Roberts, Esther Schipper, and Sies + Höke.
The featured artists range from globally known names like Georg Baselitz (with Cristea Roberts) and Anri Sala (with Esther Schipper) to beloved historical figures like Blinky Palermo (at Sies + Höke) and younger participants like Petrit Halilaj (at Kurimanzutto).
Here are some of the highlights to look forward to.
Dewey Crumpler at Jenkins Johnson Gallery
The San Francisco-based Jenkins Johnson Gallery is featuring work by the longtime San Francisco Art Institute painting professor Dewey Crumpler, who taught artists like Kehinde Wiley and Deborah Roberts. The gallery’s display focuses on two objects that have been recurring motifs in Crumpler’s work for more than 30 years: the tulip and the slave collar.
“The tulip emerged into Dewey Crumpler’s work after a visit to Amsterdam,” the gallery explains. “Crumpler was attached to the physicality of the flower, its simultaneous fulness and emptiness, as well as to its relationship to space. He analogizes tulips to African bodies when they move; tulips like Africans, were taken out of the original environment, shipped around the world, and therefore transformed.”
“The shackle form, originally an African dance instrument associated with joy and power, was manipulated into a rigid tool of oppression by slave owners,” the gallery adds. “Through Buddhist transcendence, Crumpler turns the shackles into a metaphor for the mind resisting oppression.”