Plastic fantastic almost ends in Tears
Art Basel visitors crossing the Messeplatz square have been enthralled this week by Tears, an eye-popping performance created by the artist Monster Chetwynd, who let loose a throng of giant transparent balls filled with lithe men and women in sequinned leotards. Pedestrians milling around have been leaping out of the way of the plastic pods—known as zorbs—which create a scene of “celebratory poetic absurdity”, fair organisers say. But disaster was narrowly averted when one of the zorbs rolled towards the nearby tram lines, prompting the performer inside to jump out and yank it back to safety by hand. Phew!
While this year’s Art Basel may be slightly more subdued, that certainly hasn’t dampened the week’s evening festivities. Things kicked off on Monday night when crowds descended on Les Trois Rois hotel to talk shop and shoot figures in its oak-panelled bar (where a certain mega-dealer was denied entry at peak hour). On Tuesday, Ryoji Ikeda set retinas on fire with a spectacular light-and-sound installation inside a church, before the collector and style icon Michele Lamy performed an atmospheric spoken-word piece accompanied by a DJ. Party hoppers could take their pick on Wednesday, which saw the Vitra Campus’s annual summer party roll into a sweaty (and not exactly Covid-friendly) rave. We can confirm that the evening didn’t stop until well into the wee hours. Its attendees could most likely be found on Thursday clutching XL coffees and praying that no one asks them a thing about art.
Shrigley’s got wriggle room
It’s not every day you see a giant pink worm winding its way around some of Basel’s most striking landmarks, including Les Trois Rois hotel. That surreal sight comes courtesy of the UK artist David Shrigley, who has created an augmented reality work for the Acute Art smartphone app. Giant Worm was commissioned by the French champagne house Ruinart, which invited the acerbic artist to its vineyard in Reims. Daniel Birnbaum, Acute Art’s artistic director, says Basel is just the beginning. “The worm will be quite visible this fall; he will follow the art crowd wherever they go, from Milan, Berlin and Basel to London and Miami,” he quips. This worm is not for turning.
Vogue columnist Raven Smith is in town this week filming Art Basel Diaries, a video series for Hauser & Wirth gallery chronicling his experience as a Basel virgin. One vignette sees him sampling a mammoth, icing-sugar- sprinkled Swiss pastry—“like kissing a baker on Christmas morning”—and poring over blue-chip works by Cindy Sherman and Philip Guston as Iwan Wirth hangs the gallery’s Art Basel stand. “The scale of [the fair] is really impressive,” he muses, but the Basel fashionistas are best in show. “At Frieze [London], people are real peacocks but here people are subtly fabulous. It’s much more understated—but in a way more fabulous.”
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