ART FAIRS: Liste Art Fair 2022

For 26 years, Liste has been the place for young galleries from all over the world to present the most important emerging artists to an international audience in Basel. These new voices in the international art discourse try not only to understand our present but also help create it. This makes it all the more important, in times of the local and virtual, to give these artists the best possible international platform beyond a physical presence at the fair.

By EFi Michalarou
Photo: Liste Art Fair Archive

Since its foundation, Liste Art Fair has been regarded as one of the most important places for discovering young international art. The current voices in international art  discourse, presented by primarily young galleries, not only reflect our present but also help create it. In order to guarantee the galleries and their artists the best  possible presence alongside the physical fair in Basel, Liste has developed two digital formats: Liste Showtime, the digital edition of the fair, which is taking place for the third time this year, and Liste Expedition, a digital research forum and artist index, which has been permanently accessible since December 2021. From 2021, Liste consists of three formats: Liste Art Fair Basel, Liste Showtime Online and Liste Expedition Online. In Liste 2022, 82 galleries from 37 countries present works by 111 artists from them galleries have been selected to participate in Liste Art Fair Basel for the first time. The circular architecture of the fair, which was designed last year by the Belgian architectural firm OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen i.c.w. Richard Venlet, will again define the exhibition structure this year. 20 galleries are exhibiting for the first time at Liste Art Fair Basel and on Liste Showtime: Bel Ami with Masaya Chiba; CLC Gallery Venture  with Xin Wang; Clima with Vijay Masharani; Damien & The Love Guru with Jasmin Werner; Femtensesse with Jennie Hagevik Bringaker; foro. space with Andrés Matías Pinilla; François  Ghebaly  with Sharif Farrag; Franz Kaka with Mike Goldby; Harlesden High Street with Andre Morgan; Hot Wheels with Maria Toumazou; Martina Simeti with Costanza Candeloro; Nir Altman with Ndayé Kouagou; palace enterprise with Benedikte Bjerre; Parallel Oaxaca with Mili Herrera; Parliament with Guillaume Valenti; Peana with Tomás Díaz Cedeño; rhizome with Lounis Baouche; suns. works with Elise Corpataux; The Naked Room with Katya Buchatska, Lucy Ivanova and Kateryna  Lysovenko; and Voloshyn with Nikita Kadan, Lesia Khomenko and Mykola Ridnyi. A total of 60 solo and 20 group presentations are on show, as well as one col-lective stand. The artists presented are outstanding representatives of their  generation and represent the latest developments and trends in contemporary art. Mariel Capanna (Adams and Ollman, Portland) and Masaya Chiba (Bel Ami, among others, explore the subtle relationships  between memory, place and perception through performative, reflexive painting while exploring the boundaries of visual representation and translation. The soft and malleable sculptures of Eva Fàbregas embrace the possibility of tactile touch, bodily intimacy, affective bonding and various forms of somatic experimentation with and through objects. Xu Zhan Zhang’s stop-motion animation videos trace his family’s traditional Taiwanese paper craft and his interest in developing cultural beliefs. His work reflects the universality and at the same time the mutability of our cultural vessels.

Special Guests: I Never Read is a platform for artistic perspectives that takes many forms to stimulate a democratic and liberal discourse in our society. At Liste Art Fair Basel, I  Never Read, Bookshop presents a selection of art and artists’ books, among other items, by artists from the exhibiting galleries. Parallel to their appearance at Liste, the I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel will take place from 15 – 18 June 2022 in the Kaserne, where Swiss and international publishers, artists, authors and designers who choose the book as an instrument for their art production can meet. The Lucky Barn is a bar(n) dreamed up, planned and run by the artists Jeronim Horvat, Maya Hottarek and Lukas Stäuble, offering soft drinks, a video programme and a mobile phone charging station. It will be located in front of the entrance to the exhibition hall. One night Jeronim Horvat dreamt that Maya Hottarek showed a sculpture in an exhibition that resembled a horse stable, but it was made of plastic and there was a monitor on the back wall showing slow-motion videos of horses galloping in the wild. The director of Liste, Joanna Kamm, found this dream sculp-ture very appropriate for an artists’ bar, and the dream will now become reality thanks to the Lucky Barn, which will be open throughout the fair. The Pejman Foundation, based in Tehran, comprises a contemporary art museum (Argo Factory), a residency programme (Kandovan) and a wide range of art  programmes, including temporary exhibitions, publications and educational initia-tives. At Liste Art Fair Basel the foundation will present sculptural works by Neda Saeedis that explore the relationship between humans, architecture and the envi-ronment, as well as the value, materiality, power and ownership of the (human  and non-human) body in relation to urban development projects. Juxtaposing this will be works by Jason Mohaghegh & Asad Khan, who often engage in technological investigations and speculative explorations of worlds that may never exist. Here, the duo will consciously enter into a dialogue with Saeedi’s work. Helvetia Art Prize shows 2021 award-winner Anita Mucolli: Helvetia Insurance is participating in Liste Art Fair Basel for the 19th time with the Helvetia Art Prize, which supports young artists at the beginning of their profes-sional careers. In a variety of media and with formal precision, Anita Mucolli, a graduate of the School of Art and Design FHNW in Basel, deals with the question of how late capitalist systems try to penetrate the biology of humankind and our needs. In her most recent work, “The Bank Of Dreams” (2021), she deals with a future scenario in which capitalism makes the progress of technology its own, penetrates people’s subconscious and commercialises sleep and dreams. The House of Electronic Arts (HEK) Basel is a museum dedicated to digital culture and new art forms of the information age. This year, it will present a site-specific installation by Eva Papamargariti at Liste. The Greek artist’s work defies classifica-tion and not only moves between different genres but combines them. Her creations appear both figurative and abstract, organic and inorganic, depicting landscapes and uncanny creatures that seem to remain in a state of suspended animation.

Liste Showtime Online is aimed at both visitors to Liste Art Fair Basel and those who cannot travel to Basel. The 82 galleries participating in the physical fair will each present one artist from their fair presentation. Among other things, there will be works to discover that are not exhibited in Basel. With extensive information in the form of texts, videos and interviews, Liste Showtime not only provides a comprehensive overview of the programme shown in Basel but also focuses on the possibilities of conveying artistic works in a digital space. The galleries Fragment (New York) and Osnova (Moscow) will present their artists exclusively on Liste Showtime.

Photo: Eva Fàbregas, Sheddings, 2021, Silicone, Variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist and Bombon, Barcelona

Info: Liste Art Fair Basel, Messe Basel, Hall 1.1 (Entrance behind Art Unlimited), Maulbeerstrasse / corner Riehenring 113, Basel, Switzerland, Duration: 13-19/6/2022, Days & Hours: Preview: Mon. (13/6) 11:00-18:00, Tue-Sat (14-18/6) 12:00-20:00, Sun (19/6) 11:00-16:00, Admission: Regular CHF 20, Reduced CHF 10 (From 19:00 / scholars / students / seniors), www.liste.ch, Liste Showtime Online, Duration: 13-26/6/2022, www.showtime.liste.ch 

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