The Best Large-Scale Works on View in Art Basel Unlimited

Franz West, 100 Stühle (100 Chairs), 1998

If you’ve ever spent long enough at an art fair, especially one of Art Basel’s scale, you’ll be on the lookout for somewhere to sit at a certain point. Seating can vary vastly by fair—sometimes there are benches in the aisles, while other times you may need to resort to a spot at the café or furniture lent by a design brand. This edition of Basel has added another option, courtesy a 1998 installation by Franz West. Some 99 white chairs (despite the title’s suggestion that there are 100) have been installed in the middle of the hall. Upon first entering the hall, these might seem like ordinary chairs. They face a stage where a public program might take place. A label reveals that this is, in fact, a work by West. Take a load off—you’ll need the rest. 

He Xiangyu, Inherited Wounds, 2022–23

I’ll admit I let out a groan when I first walked into the room displaying He Xiangyu’s Inherited Wounds (2022–23). A second installation about chairs? Now, that’s a gimmick. It was only when I looked down that I saw that these 24 chairs, arranged in three diagonal lines, had been reproduced at miniature scale. But there’s something more sinister going on in this work, titled Inherited Wounds. The artist collected these from various schools, carvings, doodles, and all. Those details, reproduced with painstaking precision, have now been passed down to He’s tiny seats, the suggestion being that these are the chairs’ wounds. They have been inherited, passed down from one generation to the next, perhaps.

Christian Marclay, Doors, 2022

It seemed almost serendipitous that when I walked into the black box screening Christian Marclay’s Doors when clips of Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox running from Ghostface (of Scream franchise fame) appeared. There’s something to be said about going out of your way to avoiding someone you might spot further down the aisle at an art fair. No notes, 10 out 10.

Carlos Cruz-Diez, Environnement Chromointerférent, Paris 1974/2018

In a room filled with strobing lights that mimic this artist’s well-known Op art are several very largely blown-up white balloons that can be tossed into the air. It’s all reminiscent of the children’s game of trying to stop a ball from hitting the ground. The work can be admired more seriously, too, as an expressive study of color, destabilizing whatever notions about hues and tonality one may have walking in.

Guillaume Bijl, Matratzentraum, 2003–23

In some corners of the internet, there is a conspiracy theory that a certain mattress store in the US might not actually be in the business of selling mattresses: its stores always seem empty, and there are too many close together. When walking into Guillaume Bijl’s Matratzentraum, you get the sense that this work could have potentially initiated that theory. There is almost enough verisimilitude to an actual mattress store, and just enough grift—a cardboard cutout of a salesperson is here, and paper signs have been haphazardly affixed to the wall. It’s unlikely that Bijl was thinking of this conspiracy theory, considering he began the work in 2003 and currently works in Belgium. Still, the work can be treated as a commentary on rampant capitalism more general. In the context of an art fair, it takes on even greater resonance.

Lubaina Himid, A Fashionable Marriage, 1986

Though Lubaina Himid’s A Fashionable Marriage, from 1986, is one of the older works on view across Unlimited, it feels as fresh as if it were made just for this presentation. That might have to do with the fact that though the artist has had a decades-long career, it wasn’t until she won the Turner Prize in 2017 that she has become of today’s art stars. It also could be because of the radical way in which Himid, who trained as a set designer for the theater, makes her mixed-media constructions. Rich in art historical references, they have a stage-like presence. This one takes on Rococo painter William Hogarth’s Marriage a-la-Mode: The Toilette (ca. 1743), a satirical portrayal of Britain’s upper crust of the era. Himid takes that one step further, offering a satire of a satire by recasting the two Black figures in Hogarth’s painting as the stars of the show. Despite being one of his day’s most acclaimed lampoonists, even he had his blind spots.  

Augustas Serapinas, Čiurlionis Gym, 2023

Since the Renaissance, artists have long looked back at Greco-Roman artistic traditions for inspiration. The men in marble sculptures, for instance, were often sculpted to be the pinnacle of bodily perfection: chiseled abs, bulging biceps and calves, bubble butts. Augustas Serapinas has taken that inspiration one step further by creating a functional gym as a durational performance piece and installation. At certain points during the day, very in-shape men will take to Čiurlionis Gym and do a few sets of pull-ups, bicep curls, or leg presses. This is a powerful, tongue-in-cheek contemplation on the repetition and discipline needed to maintain such a body that the Greeks would have deemed worthy of being depicted in art—and the technical skill and draftsmanship needed to render that body perfectly.

Monica Bonvicini, Never Again, 2005

Presented by Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Galerie Krinzinger, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

From afar, Monica Bonvicini’s Never Again looks like another light-hearted, fun installation—just an innocent set of swings. While you can still have fun on it, it might not be the innocent kind you initially had in mind. Composed of large-scale leather sex swings the size of hammocks, this imposing work, which won Bonvicini the Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2005, evokes Minimalism’s grid while subverting that movement’s obsession with power, showing how some structures force us into submission, whether we want it or not.  

Ron Terada, TL; DR, 2019–20

Ever written something too long online? You may have been greeted with the abbreviation “tl;dr” (“too long; didn’t read” for the uninitiated) as a response. Ron Terada’s Unlimited installation borrows that phrase for its title. This large-scale work presents more than 50 headlines, at various sizes, from the technology site the Verge, but reprinted in a font meant to resemble a New York Times headline. A few great ones: “People Older Than 65 Share the Most Fake News, a New Study Finds”; “Caring About Climate Change Is Trendy on Tinder”; “Twitter Is Thinking About How Tweets Can Be More Ephemeral.” In the flurry of an art week as hectic as Art Basel, it’s a feeling more attendees can relate to.