Translated from Romanian, originally published in Observator Cultural 1165.
In 2023, Art Basel, open from June 15th to June 18th, gathered approximately 290 galleries from around the world. The art fair was hosted, as usual, in Messeplatz, and it occupied two great halls, aptly called “Hall 1” and “Hall 2”. Hall 1 was home to “Unlimited”, where galleries brought art too large to be exhibited in a regular art gallery setting. There were many site-specific installations, video projections, and large scale paintings. If it was big and it moved, it was placed here.
Hall 2 was the place where the “serious” part of the fair took place: this is where the heavy-lifting galleries exhibited their best or their priciest, depending how one wants to count. All the regulars were here: Perrotin (Paris), Gagosian (NYC), and Mnuchin (NYC), to name a few. Some galleries take their job of promoting new, interesting, and trend-setting art seriously, while others just use the hip, gimmicky aspects of contemporary art, hoping to bring big bucks on the backs of some non-discerning millionaires. Perrotin seems to belong to the latter category: there was nothing that interesting there, just funny bits and pieces. A large mirror dominated the display, much like in other galleries. A buyer was talking about it with the gallery rep; they were negotiating the price and couldn’t agree. The rep just asked for the buyer’s contact information, to which he replied: “You already have my contact information!” “Are you sure?” came the answer from the gallerist. Perrotin can look down on buyers; they’re French and they don’t care. This easy-going rudeness is seen in what they sell, although they do represent primetime names of contemporary art, such as Maurizio Catelan or Takashi Murakami.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Tough question for such a tough crowd. Draped in silk and linen/silk combinations, sporting Friulanes in muted colors, Art Basel visitors had a plethora of reflecting surfaces to enjoy, detest, go through, around, or “forget” to even see. I took pictures of many of the mirror works, initially thinking that it’s just me noticing this trend: but no, a gallery rep told me that he’s also noticing how many mirrors have been brought to this edition of the fair. After about 10 such works, I stopped counting. Some were moving, some were elegant, some were vertical, others convex, concave, and miniature-sized (John M Armleder’s Squeaqy, 2022). There was cast marble flowing over some such works (Ryan Gander’s I be… (lvi), 2023); and there were shards giving us fly-vision images of ourselves (Anish Kapoor’s Random Triangle Mirror, 2018). Some mirrors had piercings (Donna Huanca’s DNA ECHO (Puertas con ojeras), 2023; others could impale the inattentive visitor (Liliane Lijn’s Queen of Hearts, Queen of Diamonds, 1980). Silkscreened images juxtaposed well in selfies (Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Partitura in Nero – E, 2010-2012).
Initially, I took pictures of the works themselves; after a while, I realized that I actually looked good enough to be in the photos, too. Why should others occupy my pictorial space? I was thus trapped in the old-school selfie game; most everyone was using smartphones to take pictures and it was interesting to see how difficult it is to photograph oneself in a mirror by not using the selfie camera on our devices. Graybeards with big Canons were smiling indulgently at our millennial efforts. I did not see them taking selfies with their mirrorless cameras: what use were these artworks to them? Is it more interesting to just look at the world through a mirror? Or maybe the whole idea was to ironically appreciate the spectacle we – selfie-takers – were making of ourselves and I was the one not getting it.
We deride the everyday act of admiring oneself in a mirror: it is an indication of vanity. Looks should not matter, we should look at what is inside, forget about the covers of the book. Mirrors are to be used to only disclose correctable flaws, needed to facilitate civilized transactions. “Do I have some spinach in my teeth?” is an acceptable question to ask the Mirror. “Am I pretty enough to be the object of outward admiration?” is a question many morality tales seem to warn against. Artists, of all people, are aware of such questions, even more so, in the context of a commercial art show of this size. Was the hope of some that they would be more successful in selling if they manage to attract the buyers in a game of hide-and-seek with their own reflection? It’s almost as if some thought that it might be beneficial to use glass to “paint” the ultimate, hi-def portrait of a nameless millionaire. Instead, they were stuck with me, just a freelance art journalist.
One might think it is such a facile game: furtively looking in a mirror, without wanting to attract attention to oneself, while attempting to decide where a thing like that should be placed. My own interpretation is that many such pieces, especially the more sculptural ones, were designed to go in foyers – of hotels, public institutions, mansions, etc. Thus, the subtlety of the buyer would be on display: visitors to their place would have to look in the mirror; it would be in bad taste not to admire the work, just as much as it would be trying to rearrange an out-of-place piece of clothing or to take a selfie.
A wall of icons displayed on the first day by the Esther Schipper Gallery (Berlin) seemed out of place, given the context: Eastern churches usually use an iconostasis for separating the altar from the church goers; placing an iconostasis in an art fair has no meaning. Getting closer, the viewer could better see how the faces had been covered with gold leaf. Instead of the Lord’s Mother, you could see your own face… is it part of Etienne Chambaud’s intention to offer us the opportunity to access the divine plane through the possible insertion of a selfie in an icon? All these icons bearing the name of “Uncreature” were made by Chambaud in 2023 by covering some old icons, forgotten and, thus, definitively changed. Is there anything left to be worshiped in them: the wood, the gold, or the patina? Maybe not all meaning is lost; it can be recovered, if we give them the chance, trying to touch the pain hidden under the shiny new face.
Other trends seem to be taking shape around Romanian artists, especially Adrian Ghenie, whose large-scale works, of course, sell for millions of euros. Co-founder of the Romanian gallery Plan B, which is now based in Berlin, Ghenie created a style in which colors are chewed up by crowding shapes, in a delirious mix between the abstract and the figurative. Sometimes, we discern a gigantic hand holding a cigarette and/or a mobile phone. Ghenie seems to be triggered by the selfie aspect of contemporary society, just like those other creators of mirrors. But why must the hand of a Kaiju monster greet the viewer? Should we obey or rebel against the importance of the selfie? The question isn’t new: its refreshing aroma belongs to the 1990s naivete, when we were still incredulously envying everyone sporting such a device in a sci-fi universe.
Plan B is also representing other Romanian artists: I liked Iulia Nistor’s work: Evidence E7 W5 P9, from 2019, in which blue and gray combine in light, comforting textile waves. Ciprian Muresan presented a graphic work in which we can see “All the images from a book about Rubens” (2022). Finally, Cornel Brudașcu highlights an expressionism reminiscent of Kiefer, in refined shades of purple and black (Untitled 2023).
An interesting discovery was the painter Kinga Bartis who, to my surprise, was born in the country of Transylvania (there is no such country; Transylvania is a region in Romania) in 1984 and lives and works in Denmark. At least, that’s what the label that the Danish gallery that represents her stuck next to her painting (Galleri Nicolai Wallner) indicates. Going beyond this dubious aspect, her work Loving thru woven currents (2023) is a personal interpretation, in gray tones, of the famous Mars and Venus painted by Botticelli. Many more curved lines, much less light and clarity absorb the viewer and envelop them in a dizzying impression of the two lovers, lost in the waves of a sharp and cold ocean.
I also came across a “painting” made by Dan Perjovschi from the metal wire cages that protect the corks of sparkling wine bottles. Wire drawing (gold) (2016) brightens up the space it occupies, being both playful and serious: the viewer remains stunned and it must take care to extract themselves from the stapled tapestry on the wall. Marieta Chirulescu, also represented by The Gregor Podnar Gallery, based in Vienna, showed an Untitled (2023) painting, in which delicate forms, reminiscent of Morandi, are lost in the layered background of the whole work. Unfortunately, the dialogue with Podnar himself was not as interesting as the works he had brought to the fair. He had to tell me that a Hungarian nationalist would be displeased should they learn I know no Hungarian, after growing up in Romania. Not living in the country for many years, I had forgotten about this low-brow humor, which doesn’t sit well with either side.
There is much more to be said about Art Basel: I will only conclude by stating that it is a remarkable cultural phenomenon and that it should be visited by all who are interested in art. Many of the works shown here cannot be seen in other contexts, most of them finding their place in private collections to which the general public will never have access.