ARTNEWS
It is positively beautiful in Basel right now, and many of the locals can be seen shedding their clothes and jumping into the Rhine, letting the current carry them along. It is, to put it lightly, not the greatest time to be holed up in a convention center. For those looking to enjoy the great outdoors, though, Art Basel offers its Parcours program, where for-sale works can be viewed on city streets, houses, museums, basketball courts, and parks across the river on the Münsterplatz. There are more than 20 works there (including a wild Marvin Gaye Chetwynd installation and performance), and even when they occasionally disappoint, their environs often dazzle.
Lena Henke has found the best spot in the show, a tiny little park underneath the Münsterplatz where she is showing remarkable sculptures—bodies carved out of tons of sand in huge bags. She has sand breasts there, too, sitting surreally on a table and a ledge. Erika Verzutti has a long branch of bronzed bananas on the wall of a basketball court hidden on the edge of the Münsterplatz. (Fences and walls mark the irregular edges of the court, so that there appears to be no way to go out of bounds.) And Amanda Ross-Ho has affixed super-large keys for various cultural Basel institutions to manholes and fences. They’re invitations to get to the other art venues in this art-rich town.
Below, a look around the fair.
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Amanda Ross-Ho has scattered supersize keys for Basel cultural institutions around the streets.
Sophie Nys, Footnote to a fountain, 2017.
Katinka Bock, Parasite Fountain, 2017, in the Ritterhof Garden, sucking water from another fountain and spraying it onto the street.
The keychain for Amanda Ross-Ho's keys, which is a copy of her own. The title of the work is UnTitle:d Findings (ACCESS), 2017.
Erika Verzutti's Centipede, 2017, on the wall of an oddly shaped basketball court at the Sportplatz
Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Who am I to Judge, or, It Must be Something Delicious, 2017, in the Gymnasium am Münsterplatz.
Partial view of Lena Henke's work in the Garden of the Lesegesellschaft, the Reading Society.
A man enjoying a quiet moment next to a sand sculpture by Lena Henke, tucked away in the Garden of the Lesegesellschaft, the Reading Society.
Pedro Cabrita Reis, The Basel Line, 2017, on the corner of Rittergasse and Münsterplatz.
Latifa Echakhch's Screen Shot, 2015, at the Bischofshof.
Berlinde De Bruyckere, My Deer, 2011–13, which Hauser & Wirth sold to a private foundation in the United Kingdom for $392,000.
A ferocious dinosaur sculpture next to part of GCC's Belief in the Power of Believe, 2017, at the Naturhistorisches Museum Basel.
Not part of Parcours: Angela Berney Fine Arts, which is located on the Münsterplatz, has teamed with Karsten Greve and Anthony JP Meyer to present an exhibition of work by Norbert Prangenberg, as well as Oceanic and Eskimo art. This piece, from Papua New Guinea, was acquired by Margaret Mead around 1932–33.
Ai Weiwei's Iron Tree, 2016, on the Münsterplatz.
Rirkrit Tiravanija, Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2007 (stories are propaganda so pay a penny for the royalties and sing a prologue to history if the mass is against the classes the girls will be god the only free choice is refusal to pay choking on the billboards philosophy in the boudoir the days of this society is numbered), 2007.
A view over the Rhine River toward the Münsterplatz with Rirkrit Tiravanija's work visible.