LISTE 2019 | About the Fair

From June 10–16, 2019, LISTE’s participating galleries will present artistic positions that not only examine the present but also create it – through new aesthetics, media and values – to an international audience of experts and art lovers alike. Under the premise of promoting young art, the LISTE committee selected 77 galleries from 33 countries, with a strong focus on giving significant space to galleries from cities beyond the established art centres as on enabling galleries to show for the first time. Twenty-one galleries, including A Thousand Plateaus Art Space / Chengdu, Dastan's Basement / Teheran, Good Weather / North Little Rock, LC Queisser / Tbilisi, Piedras / Buenos Aires, ROH Projects / Jakarta and Sariev Contempory / Plovdiv, Sofia, will present their programme at LISTE for the first time this year. Under the new direction of Joanna Kamm, LISTE's central idea of support and promotion will be continued, opening the door to the international art world for a new, outstanding generation of gallerists and artists.

LISTE’s primary focus is on the artists and strong presentations of their work. Thirty-eight galleries have decided to give a deeper insight into a single artist’s practice through presentations formatted as solo shows. The following artists will have solo presentations: Nick Bastis (Ermes-Ermes), Julie Béna (Joseph Tang), Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan (Ivan), Benji Boyadgian (Öktem Aykut), Catharine Czudej (Ginerva Gambino), Hayden Dunham (Company), Ron Ewert (Good Weather), Andrea Fourchy (Lomex), Patrick Goddard (Seventeen), Penny Goring (Arcadia Missa and Sandy Brown), Emma Hart (The Sunday Painter), Holly Hendry (Frutta), Klara Hosnedlova (hunt kastner), Nona Inescu (Sabot), Agata Ingarden (Piktogram), Sebastian Jefford (Gianni Manhattan), Vikenti Komitski (Sariev Contemporary), Maggie Lee (Édouard Montassut), Keto Logua (LC Queisser), João Loureiro (Galeria Sé), Isaac Lythgoe (Super Dakota), Regina de Miguel (Maisterravalbuena), Hana Miletić (LambdaLambdaLambda), Dylan Mira (Park View/Paul Soto), Yoan Mudry (Union Pacific), Aditya Novali (ROH Projects), Kayode Ojo (Sweetwater), Gabriel Pericàs (PM8), Josefine Reisch (Galerie Noah Klink), Liv Schulman (Piedras), Heji Shin (Galerie Bernhard), Aviva Silverman (Veda), Teppei Soutome (Aoyama Meguro), Gili Tal (Jenny's), Yukihiro Taguchi (Mujin-To Production), Chen Xiaoyi (A Thousand Plateaus Art Space), Trevor Yeung (Galerie Allen) and Miao Ying (MadeIn).

To reinforce this art-focussed approach, LISTE has developed a new concept for the placement of galleries, which includes adapting the exhibition architecture in nine rooms. LISTE’s special location at Werkraum Warteck pp corresponds to the idea of discovery with the space’s five floors divided into a diverse array of rooms, branches and angles. To ensure both a smooth and impressive journey through the building, more than just spatial requirements and the sequence of galleries have been considered: For the presentations in each room, the galleries were selected with the intention that their artworks will strengthen and complement each other’s, while the modified architecture will allow for concentrated interactions with the individual works of art.

Joinery

One of LISTE’s new initiatives is the Joinery: on the one hand it is a place where galleries can show videos and performances that exceed the limitations of their designated areas, while on the other hand it is also a meeting point and think tank that considers the latest topics in art discourse. LISTE regards the Joinery as central to both creating a space for galleries to present works that are commercially difficult due to their medium at no extra cost as well as to engage with and address new concepts and strategies of marketing and artistic practices.

The video and performance programme includes artists like Christopher Aque (Sweetwater, Berlin) Nick Bastis (Ermes-Ermes), Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan (Ivan), Daniela and Linda Dostálková (Piktogram), Hayden Dunham (Company), Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann and Paul Spengemann (Galerie Noah Klink), Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė (Lucas Hirsch), Penny Goring (Arcadia Missa), Monica Heller (Piedras), Nona Inescu (Sabot), Bronwyn Katz (blank), Vikenti Komitski (Sariev Contemporary), Miriam Laura Leonardi (Galerie Maria Bernheim), !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Super Dakota), Caroline Mesquita (Union Pacific), Shana Moulton (Gregor Staiger), Liv Schulman (Piedras), Buhlebezwe Siwani (Madragoa), Zheng Yuan (MadeIn). The detailed video and performance programme can be found on page 5 -7 of the press release.For the discourse programme, Spike Art Magazine has been invited as special guest and in addition to an exhibition at Druckwerk they are organising the Spike Forum at the Joinery unter the topic "The Artist as X: A Series of Conversations on New Artistic Strategies”, that will take place daily from Tuesday to Sunday and includes guest speakers such as Ed Fornieles and Omsk Social Club, moderated by Rita Vitorelli & Christian Kobald; Jeanne-Salomé Rochard and Julian Zigerli moderated by Toke Lykkeberg; Kei Kreutler and Elie Ayache, moderated by Paul Feigelfeld; Sandra Nedvetskaia, Nina Roehrs and Jakob Kudsk Steensen, moderated by Christian Kobald; Rózsa Farkas and KJ Freeman, moderated by Chus Martínez and a performance by Sandra Mujinga. The detailed Spike Forum programme can be found on page 8 of the press release.

Impact

LISTE is particularly pleased to announce Impact, a new grant from a private Swiss foundation that will provide one gallery with lasting financial support for a period of three years. The funding criterion is that the gallery’s presentation at LISTE marks the first time its programme has been presented outside of its home country and that the gallery is showing at least one artist who has not yet exhibited abroad. This year Impact has been awarded to Lodos from Mexico City.

Friends of LISTE

The contributions made by the Friends of LISTE patronage circle are used to directly support galleries. In order to provide visitors substantial insight into the latest developments in contemporary art, LISTE encourages galleries to present individual or curated group exhibitions; however, this often means there is a greater financial risk for the galleries. LISTE is therefore all the more pleased that Friends of LISTE is once again supporting 11 galleries with exceptionally dedicated presentations this year:

Bonny Poon / Victoria Colmegna, Peter Friel, Nik Geene, Marie Karlberg, Bonny Poon; Édouard Montassut / Maggie Lee; Frutta / Holly Hendry; Ivan / Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan; Lucas Hirsch / Dorota Gaweda & Egle Kulbokaite, Jannis Marwitz; Park View/Paul Soto / Dylan Mira; Piedras / Liv Schulman; PM8 / Gabriel Pericàs; Polansky / Jakub Choma, Pakui Hardware; Southard Reid / Lea Cetera, Cayetano Ferrer; and Truth and Consequences / Mathis Altmann, Claire van Lubeek.

Helvetia Art Prize

For the 16th time, the Helvetia Art Prize has been awarded. The prestigious prize is aimed at supporting graduates of Swiss art schools in the fields of fine arts and media art. This year's prize, which includes CHF 15,000 and a solo presentation at LISTE, went to Kaspar Ludwig (*1989), a graduate of the Fine Arts Master's programme at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel.

Special Guests

This year LISTE welcomes Spike Art Magazine as a special guest that contributes significantly to the discourse around current topics in art through texts published online and in print as well as through organised events. Presented at Druckwerk, “The Day Whose End Will Not Be an Evening” will be a participatory installation that gives a sense of the Spike universe and its community.

A returning special guest is Basel’s HeK (Haus der Elektronische Künste), which exhibits digital culture and new art forms of the information age. This year, HeK will present an enigmatic video tutorial by French artist Elisabeth Caravella and a series of pictures by Belgian artist Dries Depoorter, who has hacked public cameras to take photographs of jaywalkers around the world.

LISTE’s third special guest is also a returning one: the exhibition space Kaskadenkondensator, located in Werkraum Warteck pp and focussed on performative forms of expression. Together with the artist-curator-collective Dr. Kuckucks Labrador, they will present AMcontemporary and DEPO, two projects deeply engaged in the contemporary and social practice of art in Bulgaria and Turkey.