Liste Art Fair Basel 2024 Keeps Its Flair for Experimentation Alive

On Monday, the VIP opening of Liste Art Fair Basel was heralded with the sound of clinking glasses in the Swiss sunshine and a healthy queue of visitors. Returning to the same section of Messe Basel for its 29th edition, the fair once again affirmed its curatorial eye for inviting experimentation and tastemaking exhibitors. As the opening hours of the fair ticked past, VIPs in attendance seemed to be responding with enthusiasm.

“This year, we are once again able to present the most promising new galleries and their artists to an international audience of experts,” said Peter Bläuer, who co-founded the fair with Eva Presenhuber in 1996. “It makes me very happy to once again work with Stiftung Liste Basel on this important task of helping to promote a future generation of galleries. What could be better than supporting and helping?”

With 93 exhibitors from 35 countries, the fair succeeds in being both broad in scope and easy to peruse, thanks in part to its famous circular booth layout where exhibitors are formatted in an open-plan style. Browsing sometimes feels like dropping by someone’s living room. And at a time when art fairs are so overwhelmingly dominated by painting, the mix of media on view from galleries here offers something of a palate cleanser for even the most seasoned visitors among the crowds.

With Art Basel opening its VIP preview the day after Liste’s opening, the fair was also well stocked with an international clientele. And gallerists were quick to point out the range of the fair’s attendees. “We not only have good clients here but it’s also curators, and people from all over the world,” said Pier Stuker Alvarez, a partner at the emerging Zürich gallery Blue Velvet. “They see Liste as a filter of the best young galleries worldwide.”

Its standout booth of works by Adam Cruces featured giant Winston cigarettes (made not from tobacco but polyester and polyurethane) leaning against the back wall, flanked by iron-shaped mirrored aluminum works—the “irony of irons” as Alvarez described it. There’s also a sculpture of a tiny fortune cookie perched on its printed paper fortune (“A happy surprise is waiting for you”) that snakes through the booth, and a humorous pastel-on-velour drawing of wrinkly-skinned dogs whose fur hides words like “thoughts” and “prayers.” The gallery reported strong sales at the booth, with more than five of the works finding buyers in the opening hours of the fair.

The booth is also one of 75 solo presentations at this year’s edition, a longstanding trend in the fair’s programming. Many exhibitors are treating their fair presentations here like small gallery shows, finding fresh ways to introduce their new, sometimes young, artists. Among the most effective in this regard is the immersive booth of London-, L.A.-, and Lagos-based Rele, which is showcasing works by Gladys Kalichini, including a performative video and a series of textile prints and a selection of objects used in the artist's ritual that encompass soap, pails, trays, and towels.

Exploring the roles played by women in Zambian society through the connective elements of fabric and water, the booth was met by sustained attention from viewers throughout the day. “It’s different for us, but we thought it was a very important story,” said gallery founder Adenrele Sonariwo. “This work is very much about women and making sure that they’re not erased from history. And this is a different iteration of some of the installations she’s done in the past.” The works are priced between $2,000 and $4,000.

Barcelona gallery BomBon Projects took a similar approach, featuring a collection of sculptures by Ludovica Carbotta that are inspired by urban spaces and constructed by projecting pieces of real places into fictional environments. “It’s about finding a balance,” said Bernat Daviu of the gallery when discussing the booth’s layout. “We’re trying to be quite loyal to the specificity of the sculptures, but at the same time, we want to single out the objects or the sculptures in themselves.” The works, priced between $4,000 and $15,000, were attracting attention throughout the day.

A similarly inventive booth format is found at New York–based gallery Margot Samel’s solo presentation of works by Melissa Joseph, where found objects such as vintage first aid kits and accordions become frames for scenes of musical communion, rendered in felted wool. The works (priced from $6,500 to $11,000) are around 7 by 13 inches in size and dotted around walls and the floor of the booth, inviting visitors to crouch down and get up close. “I just pictured them here on the floor space,” said gallery founder Samel. “They’re so tiny and really impactful.”

Other booths also asked visitors to peer closer: L.A. dealer Francois Ghebaly presented works by Indian artist Ragini Bhow, a dark series of pointillist abstractions in crushed crystal, mica, and flashe on birch. A metallic sculpture with splayed ash across the floor further impedes the visitor’s access. Bringing the floor work, an earlier piece from the artist’s career, was an important step, explained Ghebaly. “The ritual of burning objects is something that is very important in [Bhow’s] sculptural practice, and we felt like it was very important to show the ash, and the essence and the starting point for our relationship.” Works here are priced from $6,00 to $16,000.

As several galleries reported throughout the day, the fair’s reputation for presentations of emerging artists worth paying attention to isn’t merely a curatorial quirk, but a tried and tested formula, especially when executed by tastemaking galleries. London and Addis Ababa gallery Addis Fine Art is among the sophomore attendees at the fair that is returning after an “overwhelmingly brilliant” first outing, according to Kate Kirby, a sales and business director at the gallery.

This year, the gallery is presenting a series of paintings and works on paper by Selome Muleta that skilfully interrogate the relationship between women and domestic spaces through ambiguous boundaries and splashes of exuberant color. In the outstanding 2023 diptych Immersion XII, limbs and heads protrude from a bathtub in a vividly enigmatic scene. “There’s a real psychological complexity that I think follows through her entire body of work,” explained Kirby. “We felt like this was just a phenomenal opportunity for her to get that kind of exposure, and so far, [we] have already been having great conversations.” Works are priced from $4,000 to $32,000.

Another returning fair attendee, Zürich gallerist Philipp Zollinger, is also showing newer works, in a solo presentation of the painter Emma McMillan. Here, six blurrily figurative paintings of magnified insects border on the abstract. “I usually bring the newest addition of artists to the fair because it makes sense to spread the word and have it seen by as many people as possible, and to position the artist in the program,” said the gallerist, who noted that five of the works were on hold within the opening hours of the fair.

While solo booths made up the vast majority of the fair, there were also some strong group presentations. At Shanghai and Venice gallery Capsule, for instance, founder Enrico Polato described the galley’s approach as “almost like entering a time capsule where you see quite a number of artists and artworks that have been developing ideas.”