Art Basel continues to fight against corona restrictions. – Culture

An old white Mercedes-W123 station wagon with a Russian registration number stands on the exhibition grounds in downtown Basel. The vehicle has been surrounded by people since Monday. Passers-by peek curiously into the interior of the old car, which is parked inconspicuously and inconspicuously next to Hall 1. On the folded back seats in the rear of the Mercedes, two lifelike young sleeping male figures lie exhausted and huddled close together on moving felt blankets. Behind the windshield you can see trade fair passes: the two figures obviously work as precarious stand builders and art installers. With the work “The Outsiders”, which looks like a silent performance but is a sculpture, the Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset has delivered a “Conversation Piece” for the “Unlimited” section of Art Basel and draws attention to those that keep the commercial art spectacle going in secret.

The “Unlimited” part of the fair, which opened its doors to the specialist public on Monday afternoon, is reserved for complex and particularly elaborate works of art, such as the large-format paintings by Andreas Schulze that form a traffic jam, the ten wonderfully rattling sheet aluminum Pictures by Albert Oehlen or the installation by Lucy McKenzie, which resembles a broken wall, behind which a long hidden mural in the realism style of the fifties emerges. The fact that the market falls back to the tried and tested medium of painting when times become more uncertain is demonstrated in an exemplary manner in the “Unlimited” hall. However, the fact that the majority of art was chosen by men gives this section curated by Giovanni Carmine, despite exceptions, the degree of freshness of stale bread. What the prominently presented bread house by Urs Fischer is a good fit again.

Changes have always been part of the most important art fair in the world, which has traditionally been held in Basel since 1970 and, along with the Venice Biennale and the documenta in Kassel, is one of the major international events. But at the first major international trade fair after the general compulsory Covid pandemic break, everything is really different this time. Last autumn, the British investor James Murdoch joined the economically sluggish Art Basel parent company MCH Group. This year’s restart of the fair was postponed from June to September due to the pandemic. Due to the international travel restrictions and the renewed uncertainty as a result of the Delta variant, most of the Art Basel collector’s audience from North America, Asia and Russia did not travel to Switzerland. This also applies to a few gallery owners, mainly from Asia, to whom the fair offers so-called “satellite booths”, which are looked after by local fair staff. At the fair they are unofficially called “ghost booths”.

They can be counted on one hand and are not noticeable. The ShanghART Gallery, for example, has such a stand, which operates exhibition rooms in Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore. At the stand with the abstract-geometric paintings by the painter Ding Yi from Shanghai, an art historian from Switzerland will be available to answer any questions. Three gallery employees from China are online via zoom on a tablet and, if necessary, the gallery owner Lorenz Helbling can also be consulted via internet telephony. If Helbling had come to Switzerland, he would have to undergo a three-week quarantine on the return trip to China. He simply doesn’t have the time for that at the moment, the gallery owner says over the phone, but he still thinks direct exchange on site is very important.

Open detailed view

The practice of the Swiss health authority BAG of initially only issuing Covid certificates for vaccines approved in Switzerland, i.e. only for Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson, also caused uncertainty. These certificates are mandatory for access to the exhibition grounds, for visits to restaurants and other events. Only on the eve of the fair did it become known that AstraZeneca-vaccinated people did not have to undergo any additional tests in order to get to the fairgrounds. However, it remained unclear how to deal with Sinovac and Sputnik vaccinated people. The trade fair has set up a “COVID-19 Certification Center”, in which all visitors can get a silver-gray control bracelet, the “Ländeli”, around their wrist on presentation of a vaccination certificate. That works very well: With the “Bändeli” and the exhibition pass you can get to the exhibition quickly, where after the opening of the preview days on Tuesday there was a lot of hustle and bustle even with a mask being required. Limiting the capacity to 12,000 people at any given time also ensured a safe environment. According to trade fair boss Marc Spiegler, these are “20 percent less than in the past”.

Art Basel also benefits from the fact that hardly anyone buys art spontaneously these days, rather the majority of purchases are initiated between galleries and collectors long before the actual trade fair date. It has also been customary for a long time for collectors to send so-called art advisers to the fair instead of struggling through the confusing range of 272 galleries from 33 countries. Many of these “Art Advisors” work for several collectors at the same time. If the fair is to retain its central importance as the major information hub between artists, gallery owners, collectors, curators and institutional people in the future, all these people must have the opportunity to participate personally.

Open detailed view

It is still too early to take stock, but cautious optimism seems to prevail among gallery owners. The situation was difficult to assess, explains Philomene Magers from the Sprüth Magers gallery, also because many overseas collectors canceled their trips. Nevertheless, “there are a lot of collectors and curators and you can feel the audience’s desire and passion to see art in the original and to be able to relive the feel of the works”. Magers speaks of a “very successful trade fair” and adds: “It is a pleasure to be here now and it feels good.” Her colleague Esther Schipper even compares Art Basel to a “successful baptism of fire”.

In order to dampen the growing unrest among the economically less well-positioned exhibitors from the middle segment in the run-up to the fair, the fair management decided to set up a one-time CHF 1.5 million, so-called “solidarity fund” to cover any losses in sales at the participating galleries Cushion afterwards. And that the trade fair director Marc Spiegler would publicly state a “real increase in collegiality” at the press conference on Tuesday, that is a downright historical statement in view of a scene that is usually merciless competition for collectors, works of art and artists. What is also new is that Art Basel is breaking a taboo and bringing its satellite fairs closer. The most important secondary fair, the “List” for up-and-coming galleries and younger art led by Joanna Kamm, is now taking place directly on the exhibition grounds for the first time and will surprise you with an airy, circular exhibition architecture for 81 galleries from 33 countries, designed by the Belgian architects “Office”, in the middle of which sculptures are now presented.

Open detailed view

Out of necessity, Marc Spiegler conjured Art Basel, whose large-scale anniversary celebration for its 50th anniversary in 2020 fell victim to the pandemic, as a European fair: “Europe is a continent with an incredibly rich collector’s history and a broad collector base”. This is remarkable because Art Basel, with branches in Miami and Hong Kong, expanded internationally a long time ago and developed into a global brand. The emphasis on the European base is likely mainly due to the pandemic situation. In view of the increasing political restrictions in Hong Kong, the fair should already put out feelers to Japan, according to the art market journal “The Art Newspaper”. And the edition in Miami is already announced for the beginning of December.