VernissageTV Art TV

The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (Basel, Switzerland) hosts a significant retrospective of Henri Matisse from September 22, 2024, to January 26, 2025, marking the first in Switzerland and the German-speaking region in nearly two decades. Matisse, a pivotal figure in modern art, revolutionized painting by liberating color from form, infusing art with unprecedented lightness. This exhibition showcases over 70 key works spanning his career, from early 1900s pieces, through Fauvism, to his iconic cut-outs of the 1940s and 1950s. It reflects his artistic evolution influenced by travels across continents, drawing inspiration from diverse cultures. The exhibit, themed around Baudelaire’s “Invitation to the Voyage,” not only explores Matisse’s artistic journey but also physically recreates his travel experiences through multimedia presentations, offering a deep dive into the environments and processes that shaped his groundbreaking art.

Matisse – Invitation to the Voyage / Retrospective at Fondation Beyeler. Vernissage, September 21, 2024.

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The current exhibition at Hebel_121 Art Space in Basel brings together the work of two Japanese artists, Yanagi Kenji and Hukuda Atsuo. At first sight, the works by Kenji Yanagi and Atsuo Hukuda have different appearances. It’s a collaboration which is exploring the differences and similarities between two “methods” of applying material. Experimenting with traditional materials such as washi paper, gold leaf, ink, and lacquer inherited from ancient Japan, asking how is their method appearing in modern art. However, the two artists are presenting the “passion”, “impulse” and “movement” behind Japanese art, as one part of their mode of practice leading to mutual understanding.

Yanagi Kenji and Hukuda Atsuo at Hebel_121 Art Space Basel. Vernissage, September 7, 2024.

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Coinciding with Kunsttage Basel, Meyer Riegger’s exhibition at Galerie Mueller honors the late Dutch artist Jacqueline de Jong (1939–2024), who passed away at 85. Spanning over six decades, de Jong’s work oscillated between Abstract Expressionism, New Figuration, and Pop Art, exploring themes of violence, humor, eroticism, and everyday banality. Born into a Jewish family in Enschede, she fled to Switzerland during WWII, returning to the Netherlands post-war. Her multilingualism and adaptability mirrored her artistic versatility, incorporating pop culture, politics, and art historical references into her works.

De Jong’s career was marked by her engagement with the Situationist International, leading her to create *The Situationist Times* after being expelled from the group. Her art often reflected the Situationist concepts of ‘détournement’ and ‘dérive’, evident in her diverse media from paintings to protest posters and artist books. She also integrated unconventional materials like dried potatoes into her later works, showcasing her playful yet profound approach to art.

Her unconventional path included stints in Paris, where she worked for Christian Dior and with Cobra painter Karel Appel, and in London before joining the Stedelijk Museum. De Jong’s influence is recognized posthumously with a retrospective at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in November 2024, highlighting her significant contributions to modern art. Her work, known for its shape-shifting nature, continues to inspire through its bold exploration of form and content.

Meyer Riegger, Basel c/o Galerie Mueller (Rebgasse 46). August 30, 2024.

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Exhibition text (excerpt):

This year at Kunsttage Basel we open a solo exhibition with works by the Dutch artist Jacqueline de Jong (1939–2024), who sadly recently passed away at the age of 85. During a career spanning more than six decades, de Jong explored violence, humour, eroticism and the banality of human existence. She is best known for her paintings, which range in form from Abstract Expressionism to New Figuration and Pop Art. 

De Jong was born in the Dutch city of Enschede in 1939 to a Jewish family of art collectors. During the war, she fled to Switzerland with her family as an infant. When she returned to the Netherlands shortly after the end of the war, de Jong had to relearn her mother tongue. Just as de Jong adapted to new contexts and learnt languages at a young age – she later spoke five fluently – she also switched between different mediums and styles with nonchalant ease. She borrowed her themes from the worlds of pop culture, entertainment and political reporting – on the Gulf War, for example – and made overt references to the works of other artists such as Francisco de Goya, R. B. Kitaj and Francis Bacon. 

Curator Alison M. Gingeras described de Jong’s artistic shape-shifting as ‘perpetual migration as situation’ – a tendency to effortlessly cross boundaries and take on new perspectives with relish. The scale of her works also varies, from small diptychs and handwritten diaries to monumental canvases dominated by an absurd, often wild and sensual world which is populated by creatures resembling humans, animals and monsters. 

De Jong designed protest posters for the 1968 revolts in Paris; she also made drawings, created artist’s books, sculptures and sculptural paintings, such as her diptychs from the 1970s, which can be folded up like suitcases and taken along when travelling. Later, she not only integrated the monstrous and exaggerated forms of potatoes into her paintings, but also designed jewellery using the dried tubers from her garden and integrated photographs and plant matter into her mixed-media works. 

The artist’s unconventional educational path also proves her ability to embrace the new: rather than art, she studied drama, art history and French; she lived in Paris – where she worked for Christian Dior and later as an assistant to the Cobra painter Karel Appel – and in London, followed by a period of employment at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. 

At the age of twenty, de Jong met Asger Jorn, an artist who co-founded the Cobra movement. During their romantic relationship, she crossed paths with other avant-garde artists, including Guy Debord, a founding member of the Situationist International, a left-wing French group that opposed the flood of images in the bourgeois mass media. When Debord expelled all visual artists from the movement in 1962, de Jong responded by launching the English-language magazine The Situationist Times from her Paris flat. She dedicated each of the six issues to a motif related to the Situationist theme of ‘dérive’ (drift): labyrinths, knots, rings, and so on. These ‘topologies’ are alternative forms of knowledge – systems that function not in the realm of logic, but in that of paradoxes, misunderstandings and contradictions. 

When de Jong described the Situationist International movement in a letter from 1964, she named ‘détournement’ (diversion), ‘dérive’ (drift) and ‘modification’ as its most important tools. These methods also shaped her own approach to the very end: in her paintings, she effortlessly emphasised the eroticism of billiard games, saw the humorous side of crime stories, and covered shrivelled potatoes with precious gold. De Jong additionally knew how to take advantage of the fact that her work only gained wider recognition later in her career: ‘My function as an “undercover” in art is to discover and modify all universal experience to my own gusto.’ 

Jacqueline de Jong (1939–2024) lived and worked between Amsterdam in the Netherlands and in the Bourbonnais region of France. In November 2024, the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale will present the first retrospective of de Jong’s work in the USA. Recent solo museum exhibitions include The Ultimate Kiss at WIELS, Brussels (2021), which was also shown at MOSTYN, Wales (2021/22) and the Kunstmuseum Ravensburg (2022); Pinball Wizard: The Work and Life of Jacqueline de Jong, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2019); and Jacqueline de Jong, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (2018/19). Recent group exhibitions featuring her work have taken place at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2024); the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2024); and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022/23). Her work is part of numerous international collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen; the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; the Elie Khouri Art Foundation, Dubai; the Kunstmuseum Göteborg; the Lenbachhaus, Munich; and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.

The exhibition ‘Skulls and Bones’ at Galerie Mueller in Basel (Switzerland) focuses on the concluding phase of Jean Tinguely‘s artistic journey, where his art deeply intertwined with his existence. This profound link is vividly displayed through his artworks from this period, crafted with persistent zeal even as he faced health challenges, right up to his passing in 1991. During the final five years, Tinguely’s creations, including significant sculptures and installations, frequently reflected on the impermanence of life.

Galerie Mueller showcases a curated collection from this era, featuring standout pieces like Deng Xiao Ping III (1990) and Le Cercle Infernale de la Mort (1990). These works exemplify his unyielding commitment and his skill in navigating through profound, intricate subjects through art. This video provides you with a walkthrough of the show on the occasion of this year’s Kunsttage Basel event.

Jean Tinguely: Skulls and Bones / Galerie Mueller, Basel, August 30, 2024.

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Out now: VernissageTV Magazine No. 56, September 2024. In this issue: Ludwig Stocker, Ana Jotta, David Armstrong, and Didier Leroi.

Click image or this link to download the magazine (30 MB) or order print copy via Peecho.

All issues are available in our Magazine section.

Aline Zeltner: Heute ist ein guter Tag für einen Ausflug (Today is a good day for an excursion). Solo exhibition at Artachment Art Space Basel. Basel (Switzerland), Vernissage, August 31, 2024.

To Aline Zeltner, it is obvious that nothing is obvious – this includes the fact that there can actually be no explanatory text for her work: ‘I am interested in what happens between ambiguity and clarity, in the moment when everything is still possible and not the one thing.’ But: it’s a good day for an outing, so we want to go on a journey to explore the artist’s world.

We as viewers stand somewhat awkwardly and unsuspectingly at the large window front, the view of the inside obscured as if by thick fog. Only above our eye level, in the upper part of the large glass pane, does the artist offer us with a chance for a direct view of the inside. Jumping or dancing on tiptoe, we catch glimpses and thus become a performative part of the exhibition.

Tentative sounds can be heard from inside. A waltz played on the piano? Are we mistaken? From the outside, in front of the window, we see nothing concrete, a few silhouettes right next to the window at most, but they remain impossible to identify. Our senses, our sight and hearing remain blurred, diffuse, limited, shielded by the window. At the same time, our concentration and focus on deciphering the enigmatic interior space allows our immediate surroundings to fade into the background, obscuring and veiling their perception.

Aline Zeltner’s installation plays with our expectations, the deeply human urge to explore, the will to perceive our environment, to understand it, to make it tangible. And yet, despite entering and approaching the inner world of the installation, the mystery, the enigma remains.

So we leave the exhibition, step out into the world and all that we have previously experienced with our eyes and ears, with all our senses, remains in our memory. But even here the clarity of vision is already fading again, overshadowed by new impressions. The excursion into Aline Zeltner’s world is one into the world of our own perception – as John Locke put it: ‘Nothing exists in the mind that previously was not in the senses.’

Niels ten Brink

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‘Panorama Monferrato’ is the title of a huge exhibition located in the region of Monferrato in Northern Italy curated by Carlo Falciani. The show is the project of a group of major Italian galleries such as Galleria Continua, Gagosian, and Massimo De Carlo, and already the fourth exhibition of this kind. The exhibition just ran five days (4-8 September 2024). In this video we have a look at some of the highlights of the show.

Panorama Monferrato, Camagna, Vignale, Montemagno, Castagnole (Italy). August 4/5, 2024.

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Panorama is the special event ITALICS periodically holds in some of the most extraordinary places in the Italian landscape. Panorama is a unique exhibition experience that brings the ancient, modern and contemporary, styles, techniques and multifaceted approaches together in art itineraries designed to reveal the more authentic but obscure aspects of our country, a live continuation of the extraordinary journey launched in 2020 on this platform.

Following the first edition in 2021 on the island of Procida, and the second, in 2022, in Monopoli, Puglia, both curated by Vincenzo de Bellis, Panorama 2023 was held in L’Aquila, Abruzzo, curated by Cristiana Perrella. The fourth edition of Panorama took place from September 4 to 8, 2024, in Monferrato, Piedmont, curated by Carlo Falciani.

ITALICS promotes the culture and beauty of Italy through a national network of gallerists working together and sharing experiences, on and offline, with an international audience of collectors and art lovers. It’s a consortium of more than seventy of Italy’s most influential galleries of contemporary, modern and ancient art.

The concept as a whole is the brainchild of Lorenzo Fiaschi (Galleria Continua), president of ITALICS and Pepi Marchetti Franchi (Gagosian), vice president of ITALICS, who came up with the idea in the spring of 2020 together with founding members Alfonso Artiaco, Ludovica Barbieri (Massimo De Carlo), Massimo Di Carlo (Galleria dello Scudo), Francesca Kaufmann (kaufmann repetto), Massimo Minini, Franco Noero and Carlo Orsi.

On the occasion of Kunsttage Basel 2024, Gerda Maise and Daniel Göttin present a group show with works by international artists and works from the Hebel_121 collection at their art space Hebel_121. In this video, Gerda Maise provides us with a tour of the exhibition (in German language, English translation available via YouTube player settings).

Hebel_121 is an art space located in Basel, Switzerland, known for showcasing contemporary art. It operates as a gallery where various exhibitions take place, featuring both local and international artists. The art space is run by the artists Gerda Maise and Daniel Göttin. Exhibitions at Hebel_121 range from solo shows to group exhibitions, often aligning with larger art events in the city like Art Basel or Kunsttage Basel. The space contributes to Basel’s vibrant art scene, providing artists a platform to present their work in various media, including painting, video installations, and more conceptual art forms.

Art – Life – Art as Living Space and Life Dream. Group Show at Hebel_121 Basel. Basel (Switzerland), August 29, 2024.

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Laura Mietrup, a Basel-based artist born in 1987, presents an exhibition titled after Miles Davis’s phrase, “It never entered my mind.” This title reflects her approach to art where she explores unplanned creative avenues through drawings and minimalist sculptures. Her works, primarily gouaches on paper and sculptural “nets” or “cages,” derive inspiration from architectural elements and urban discoveries, documented in her ongoing visual diary. Mietrup’s art engages with space, transforming the gallery into an interactive environment where her pieces, made from smooth wooden rods and organic shapes, interact with the architecture. Her practice spans various media, focusing on three-dimensional aesthetics even in two-dimensional works, challenging perceptions of form, function, and space. With a background in Fine Arts from HGK/FHNW Basel and an MA from HKB Bern, Mietrup has received several awards, and her work features in numerous collections, emphasizing her exploration of a new, yet familiar, visual language.

Laura Mietrup: It Never Entered My Mind / See You Next Tuesday, Basel. Vernissage, August 29, 2024.

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Exhibition text (excerpt): «It never entered my mind»… one stumbles upon this sentence in the context of the artistic practice of Basel artist Laura Mietrup, who usually works with a clear and calculated program and does not leave much to chance. How does it all come together? Her title, borrowed from the legendary American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Davis, literally sets the tone for the show.

«It never entered my mind» is also the title Laura Mietrup has given to a series of drawings with sculptural and architectural references. In these drawings she lets her mind wander, opening it up to creative challenges from her surroundings. The drawings—gouaches on paper, to be exact—are characterized by playfully placed geometric and organic forms in a harmonious and reduced color palette. From this series, she chose two drawings for the present show. Minimalist wall objects, which capture the viewer’s gaze, are placed around the gallery space; they are the main focus of the show.

These objects, reminiscent of “nets” or “cages”, are based on architectural elements and house facades. For many years, the artist has been keeping a “diary” of drawings of the treasures she discovers on her city walks. Finely polished, organically shaped objects lie gently behind smooth wooden rods. They resemble each other, but each has an individual and very special shape and formal language. The lines of the grids become the connecting elements that emphasize both the relationship between them and the space between, behind, and around—merging with the architecture of the gallery space. Laura Mietrup’s works are space-related; they become points of reference through strategic placement, engaging in a symbiotic relationship with the exhibition space by embracing, reflecting, and realigning it.

Laura Mietrup’s artistic practice is multi-faceted; she feels at home in many media, but her focus is placed on a three-dimensional and architecture-related aesthetic. Even in her drawing and painting practices, she uses a predominantly sculptural vocabulary. She moves freely between two- and three-dimensionality and questions issues of signification, functionality, and readability. Volumes, materials, borders, and architectural hierarchies are permanently renegotiated in her practice, and her work breaks through the boundaries of performance, installation, and display, always involving the viewer in the process.

Mietrup develops a new formal language system, which urgently needs interpretation from the viewer: recognizing and reading forms that seem familiar to the viewer are transformed into a new, unknown language. What this visual lexicon means remains mysterious and ultimately unsolved. As viewers, we recognize reflections on the formal language of modernism within the context of negotiating Mietrup’s own role as an artist.

Laura Mietrup (*1987, Rheinfelden, CH) graduated with a B.A. in Fine Arts from the HGK/FHNW, Basel in 2017 and completed an M.A. in Contemporary Art Practice at the HKB in Bern. She received multiple awards and grants, among others the Förderpreis of the BEWE Stiftung, the Exhibition Award Kunstmuseum Olten, grants from the Aargauer Kuratorium and Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt. Her work has entered multiple private and institutional collections. Selected solo shows include Kunsthalle Arbon, Dienstraum/Kunstmuseum Olten, Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel (Duo show with Robin Michel), Kunsthaus Baselland, Galerie Ann Mazotti, and Balzer Projects, Basel.

Coinciding with Kunsttage Basel, the second exhibition in Hauser & Wirth’s new Basel gallery is titled ‘Körperlich’, meaning ‘bodily’ in English. ‘Körperlich’ is a group show of women artists. Coinciding with Kunsttage Basel, the exhibition explores the body’s role in the construction and expression of identity through works by Louise Bourgeois, Maria Lassnig, Meret Oppenheim, Alina Szapocznikow, Irène Zurkinden, Lee Lozano, Hannah Villiger and Carol Rama. Located in the heart of Basel’s old town (opposite the Antikenmuseum and in the immediate vicinity of the Kunstmuseum in Basel), Hauser & Wirth’s new space at Luftgässlein 4 occupies the ground floor of a former silk ribbon factory built in the 1880s. In the cabinet-like gallery Hauser & Wirth presents a series of historic exhibitions under the direction of Senior Director Carlo Knoell. In this video, Carlo Knoell (Senior Director, Hauser & Wirth) guides us through the exhibition and talks about some of the highlights. ‘Körperlich’ at Hauser & Wirth Basel runs until November 2, 2024.

Körperlich / Group Exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Basel. Exhibition walkthrough with Carlo Knoell (Senior Director, Hauser & Wirth), Basel (Switzerland), August 29, 2024.

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Exhibition text (excerpt):

Although in this exhibition the emphasis is on the physiognomy of the body and its organs, the feelings portrayed within the works on view are those that emanate from deep inside: love, desire, fear, anger, hysteria—visceral emotions which reveal themselves through bodily expression. The works on display range from portraiture, depicting images of the nude body and representations of corporeal parts, to semi-abstract images that suggest bodily forms.

Through their work, these artists pose questions about bodily integrity, about control of the body, asking ultimately who has power and autonomy over our bodies, especially those that are gendered as female.

In some of the works, figures are blurred and fragmented, evoking difficult histories, personal and political conflict or violence. Whereas in Carol Rama’s ‘La guerra è astratta’ (1970) or Alina Szapocznikow’s sculpture of a disembodied mouth indicate the disowned physical self in the face of oppression, Hannah Villiger’s photographic work ‘Skulptural (Sculptural)’ (1986), a simple polaroid of an ear, might reference the last sense to be lost in the dying body, the ultimate fading of our conscious bodily existence.

While the work of the artists on view sometimes seek to celebrate the body and play on notions of beauty and gender according to the traditional portrayal of the body in art, they nevertheless problematise these depictions and explore layers of complexity to this tradition such as in the painting ‘Nue’ (1934) by Irène Zurkinden, who also explores a variety of bodily movements in her expressive drawings.

The artists presented challenge the tradition of the nude, expressing it often as a fractured, disintegrating and unstable body, as it appears in the watercolour works of Lassnig and the painting by Lozano.

The artists included could be said to engage with the legacies of a Freudian understanding of the unconscious as it is expressed through a desiring body, but their work also anticipates feminist critiques of this concept, for example, through Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection – a reminder of the material realities of the (female) body.

Elements of organicism and abjection are explored in relation to the body in the hanging sculpture by Louise Bourgeois and Rama’s mixed media canvas from 1969, where the the emphasis is on materiality. In works by Meret Oppenheim, aspects of nature are displayed, incorporating flowers or animal bodies in states of strange or surreal metamorphosis, as seen in ‘Tisch mit Vogelfüssen’ (1939 (executed 1983)).

Together, the artists in this exhibition grasp, investigate and express the complexities of the construction of self that comes from our bodies.