Portrait Chloe Wise
Opening in time for Art Basel in Basel, New York-based artist Chloe Wise has unveiled Extrasensory, her first major institutional exhibition in Switzerland, at Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger (KBH.G).
Curated by Samuel Leuenberger, the exhibition centres on PsyFi*, Wise’s most ambitious film project to date. Presented as a large-scale three-channel installation, the work explores how different cultures and historical periods have attempted to understand encounters with the unknown.
Exhibition view, Extrasensory – Chloe Wise, Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger, 2026 Photo: Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G
Drawing parallels between religious visions and contemporary accounts of extraterrestrial phenomena, PsyFi examines the ways stories, images and belief systems shape our perception of experiences that seem to exist beyond explanation. Angels, beings of light, telepathic communication and UFO encounters are treated not as opposing narratives but as evolving cultural frameworks through which humanity attempts to make sense of the inexplicable.
Rather than taking a position on belief itself, Wise investigates how myths are constructed and transmitted through visual culture. The film’s cast brings together an eclectic group of artists, musicians and actors including rapper JT, actors Lucas Bravo, Delaney Rowe, Ben Ahlers, Michael Buscemi and Bianca Leigh, alongside artists Miles Greenberg, Moses Sumney, Martine Syms and Martine Gutierrez.
Filmshot from PsyFi*, Extrasensory – Chloe Wise, Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger, 2026 Photo: © Logan White
Written and directed by Wise and produced by GUMMY Films, the project expands the artist’s ongoing interest in image-making, performance and contemporary mythology. The film’s visual language draws equally from science fiction cinema, religious iconography and late twentieth-century television aesthetics, creating a world that feels both familiar and uncanny.
Beyond the film itself, Extrasensory unfolds through a series of immersive environments. Visitors first encounter a room conceived as an esoteric roadside gift shop where UFO souvenirs sit alongside rosaries, tarot cards and devotional objects, blurring distinctions between spirituality, commerce and popular culture. Elsewhere, a second environment evokes a hybrid space that is part dressing room, part place of worship and part spacecraft interior.
“Extrasensory emerged from my interest in how, across centuries, people have tried to describe experiences that exist beyond language, logic, or proof, from angels and visions to extraterrestrial beings,”
says Wise.
“The exhibition explores how perception is shaped by storytelling, belief systems, media, and imagery, and how the unknown is continually translated through the visual language of its time.”
Exhibition view, Extrasensory – Chloe Wise, Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger, 2026 Photo: Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G
The exhibition arrives at a moment when questions surrounding belief, technology and perception feel increasingly relevant. Wise’s project proposes that whether we are discussing divine apparitions or alien encounters, the desire to explain the unknowable remains remarkably constant.
As collectors, curators and art world visitors descend on Basel this week, Extrasensory offers one of the city’s most ambitious institutional exhibitions, transforming KBH.G into a space where science fiction, spirituality and contemporary image culture collide.
Chloe Wise: Extrasensory 12th June – 6th September 2026 Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger (KBH.G)
About the Artist
Chloe Wise (b. 1990, Montreal, Canada) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, video, and installation. She received her BFA from Concordia University in Montreal and currently lives and works in New York.
Wise’s work is grounded in an interest in the history of portraiture and examines the multiple channels through which the Self is constructed, particularly the interweaving of consumption and image-making. With humor and irony, she references canonical art-historical tableaux while probing projected desires surrounding food, femininity, and the body. Her meticulously hand-painted casts of food, assembled into uncanny sculptural forms, sustain a tension between permanence and perishability, fiction and reality. Drawing on references from advertising, fashion, taboo, and multinational branding, Wise both parodies contemporary consumptive habits and exposes the ways in which the body is framed, stylized, and rendered excessive within systems of visual culture.
Recent solo exhibitions include Myth Information, Almine Rech, New York (2025); Told A Vision, Art Basel Parcours, Basel (2023); In the Loveliness of Perfect Deeds, Blouin Division, Montréal (2022); Spite Unseen, Galerie Sébastien Bertrand, Geneva (2022); and Chloe Wise, HEART – Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, Denmark (2019). Her work has also been included in notable group exhibitions at institutions including Centre Pompidou-Metz (2025), Kunstverein Bielefeld (2024), LACMA, Los Angeles (2022), and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2021), as well as exhibitions at Kasmin Gallery, New
York (2021), König Galerie, Berlin (2021), David Zwirner, New York (2020), and Gagosian, New York (2019). Wise is the subject of two monographs: Second Nature (2021) and Chloe Wise (2016).
Categories Art News Basel EXHIBITIONS Tags