PHOTOS: ANDREW RUSSETH/ARTNEWS
On Monday morning, the vigorous rain that has been falling on Basel for the past day suddenly let up, and the clouds gave way to sunshine. The gods favor the city along the Rhine, at least for now. By 11 a.m., a hearty group of collectors, curators, and the like was massed outside the former Warteck brewery for the latest edition of Liste, the scrappy, emerging-art-focused satellite of Art Basel, sipping glasses of champagne and nibbling on cured meats. Pretty soon, the doors were open and they were inside, perusing 77 booths that have been tucked into every nook and cranny of the labyrinthine building, which is now home to an arts center and a bevy of bars and restaurants.
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The new is the name of the game at Liste. More than a quarter of the exhibitors—21 in total—are showing at the fair for the first time. With so many cooks in the kitchen, there is pretty much something for everyone, and one can speak of trends only in the broadest sense, but let’s give it a whirl. There seems to be far less goofball figurative painting and far fewer scrappy ceramics than in recent years, which was a pleasant development. In their place: a bounty of what one might call sinister objects—vaguely threatening pieces that suggest machines or unknowable mechanical contraptions. Also here: a surprising scrum of life-size sculptures of humans and animals, often with a gothic or grotesque edge.
Below, a look around the fair, which runs through Sunday, in 51 photographs.
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It's always impressive to see the crowd at Liste tossing back wine at 10 a.m.
Los Angeles outfit Jenny’s has a solo presentation by Gili Tal.
Work by Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan at the booth of Ivan, of Bucharest, Romania.
A one-person affair by Miao Ying at MadeIn, of Shanghai. (Yes, that appears to be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s head atop the body of a bodybuilder.)
Paintings by Hoda Kashiha at the booth of Dastan’s Basement, of Tehran.
Aquarium stones—not real stones—by Théo Mercier, who has a number of wily sculptures at the booth of Paris’s Mor Charpentier gallery.
Photo pieces by Maria Pinsky and wooden sculptures by Hugh Hayden at the booth of Clearing, of Brussels and New York.
Sculptures by Cristian Răduță and a wall piece by Jin Ningning at the booth of beautifully named, Bucharest-based Sandwich gallery.
Aviva Silverman, also going solo, at the booth of Veda, of Florence, Italy.
Emma Hart, another solo outing, at booth of the Sunday Painter, of London.
A formidable array of sculptures by Agata Ingarden at the booth of Warsaw's Piktogram gallery.
Kayode Ojo, hot off a superb show at Martos Gallery in New York, flying solo at Sweetwater of Berlin.
A quite frightening sculpture by Mathis Altmann called Delve of Spade (2018), shown alongside work by Claire van Lubeek at Truth and Consequences gallery of Geneva. But for the fact that he is unable to move, this gentleman could fit right in with the crowd at Liste.
Part of Isaac Lythgoe’s showing with the Brussels-based Super Dakota, which also includes strange and not-a-little-menacing sculptural constructions hung on nearby walls.
A nice long wall of Andrea Fourchy paintings, a solo presentation offered up by New York’s Lomex gallery, which borrows its name from a Robert Moses project that was never to be.
Sebastian Jefford’s given a booth-load of these bulky, bulbous, attractive sculptures to Gianni Manhattan, of Venice.
A view to the thrumming party on the street.
At Bridget Donahue, of New York, from left to right: Monique Mouton, Jessi Reaves (yes, you can sit on it!), and Martine Syms.
Maryam Jafri’s Model 500 (2019) at the booth of Laveronica, from Modica, Italy.
Crazy contraptions—note the bounty of lights and plugs all fitted into one power strip, near the back—by Trevor Yeoung at the stand of Paris’s Galerie Allen.
The booth of New York’s Bodega gallery, with new Orion Martin paintings at back and Naoki Sutter-Shudo sculptures front and centered. (Not pictured but quite charming: wall pieces by Dena Yago.)
Yoan Mudry showing with Union Pacific, of London.
Regina de Miguel at the booth of Maisterravalbuena, of Madrid.
Sean Townley’s Opera (in aluminum), 2017, at the booth of Galerie Antoine Levi, of Paris.
Ron Ewert at Good Weather, which hails from North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Jesse Darling’s Sphinxes of the gate (Pet Sentry), 2018, at the booth of Paris’s Sultana gallery.
Tender abstractions by Benji Boyadgian at the booth of Öktem Aykut, of Istanbul.
One of the highlights of Liste is quite difficult to photograph: Dylan Mira’s 밤시각 Night Vision (2018), a bewitching video shot in Jeju, South Korea and along the Demilitarized Zone, that's being shown with misting water at the booth of Park View / Paul Soto, of Brussels and Los Angeles. A moment of quietude amid the fair.
Beach chairs, for those in need of a rest.
Kris Lemsalu’s Builder (2019) at the booth of Glasgow gallery Koppe Astner.
London’s Seventeen gallery gave over its booth to Patrick Goddart, who’s covered the ground with 200 lead fish. I watched more than one get stepped on, and while I don’t recommend following suit, they seem tough and resilient.
Sculptures by Max Hooper Schneider at Paris’s High Art, which shares a booth with fantastical paintings by Hun Kyu Kim.
Photographs by Sabelo Mlangeni at the booth of Blank, from Cape Town, South Africa.
Hayden Dunham at the booth of Company Gallery, of New York.
Adams and Ollman, of Portland, Oregon, showing, among other works, these two pieces by Ellen Lesperance.
On the roof, a bar awaits.
Showing together with Alexandre Lavet at the booth of Dürst Britt & Mayhew, which is based in the Hague, the Netherlands, Lennart Lahuis is displaying texted spelled out on the ground in water. As you can imagine, these were getting stepped on with a fair amount of regularity—a painful sight.
X-ray photographs by Heji Shin at the booth of Bernhard, which is located in nearby Zurich.
Xiaoyi Chen’s Map: Le Bloc Venetz at the booth of A Thousand Plateaus, of Chengdu, China.
A recent painting by Mathieu Malouf—something for the most venturesome collectors—at the booth Lars Friedrich, of Berlin.
An array of little drawings and other work by Yukihiro Taguchi at the booth of Tokyo’s Mujin-to Production.
Polansky, which has locations in Prague and Brno in the Czech Republic, has given over its booth to a two-person outing by Jakub Chom and Pakui Hardware.
A full booth of Gabriel Pericàs, from Galería PM8 of Vigo, Spain.
Daniele Milvio at the booth of Milan’s Federico Vavassori.
At Shanghai’s Antenna Space, drawings by Cui Jie and sculptures by Guan Xio.
The view from nearly atop the onetime brewery.
João Loureiro at the booth of Sé, of São Paulo.
New works by Maggie Lee at the booth of Paris gallery Édouard Montassut.
At Cairo’s Gypsum gallery, photographs by Mahmoud Khaled.
It’s great to see an art fair that takes its sausages seriously. I went with the official Liste sausage and found it smoky, spicy, and deeply satisfying. Worth every franc.