{"id":87229,"date":"2026-06-18T22:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/87229\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T22:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:09:12","slug":"5-attempts-to-write-about-liste-art-basels-emerging-art-satellite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/87229\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Attempts to Write About Liste, Art Basel\u2019s Emerging-Art Satellite"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. Rise and Shine<\/p>\n

On Wednesday afternoon, the satisfying smell of yeast was emanating from Galerija Manu\u0161\u2019s booth at the Liste art fair in Basel, Switzerland. The source? Oh! It was piles of bread dough that the Kosovar artist Kemil Bekte\u0161i had deposited on metal panels on the wall and the ground two days earlier. Since then, some of the lumpy, bubbly stuff had fallen onto the floor of the Messe Basel convention center.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dough is rising,\u201d Emina Mrdulja\u0161, the co-owner of the Split, Croatia\u2013based gallery, said. \u201cIt\u2019s spreading slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The metaphors write themselves at Liste, the Art Basel satellite for ambitious dealers of untested and unestablished art. This year, 105 galleries are on hand, hoping that the reputations of their artists will rise and spread. Only a lucky few will end up fully baked.<\/p>\n

Bekte\u0161i\u2014who is based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and who turns 30 next year\u2014suddenly appeared in the booth. \u201cThe dough is kind of a symbol of migration, for you when you stick together,\u201d he said. If you buy one of the works, you get the dough recipe. When you install it, you can add more dough.<\/p>\n

The artist\u2019s father is a baker, which inspired the project. What does dad think? \u201cHe\u2019s loving it,\u201d Bekte\u0161i said. \u201cIt\u2019s changed our relationship, because he understands more what I do. I\u2019m working with his primary material.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An installation view of YveYang\u2019s booth at Liste, with paintings by William Feaver on view. Courtesy YveYang<\/p>\n

2. Coming of Age<\/p>\n

Until 2013, William Feaver would have been prohibited from exhibiting at the Liste art fair in Basel, Switzerland, which used to forbid exhibitors from showing artists over 40. Even a couple years ago, dealers had to pay extra to show those 40 or older.<\/p>\n

Thank goodness those rules are gone. Feaver is 83, and he has a display of sharp, modestly scaled paintings at YveYang Gallery, of New York. They present verdant landscapes in England in thick, brushy oil, edging toward abstraction.<\/p>\n

To Brits, Feaver\u2019s name may be familiar. He was the chief art critic for the Observer\u00a0from 1975 to 1998, and he has written books on giants like Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach. But he\u2019s only rarely displayed his rough-hewn paintings. After coming across them online, Yang tracked him down and did \u201ca five-hour marathon studio visit\u201d at his home in London, she said.<\/p>\n

Tough and strange little paintings, they are spaciously installed, an antidote to some of the more visually cacophonous presentations at Liste. \u201cInitially we did a crazy design for the show, and then after we got here, we thought maybe we should do a very classic one,\u201d Yang said, \u201cbecause a classic booth can probably stand out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

CrossLypka\u2019s display with Chris Sharp at Liste. Courtesy Chris Sharp.<\/p>\n

3. Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/p>\n

Late on Tuesday night in Basel, Switzerland, the actor and sometimes-artist James Franco was at the Basel Social Club; 12 hours later, he was leaving the Liste art fair, backpack slung over his shoulder. If you are a celebrity it is good to be visible as many places as possible. That\u2019s true for art sellers, too.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles dealer Chris Sharp is in two locations this week. He is taking part in Art Basel\u2018s outdoor Parcours program (which is quite good), showing an unforgettable masked sculpture by Ishi Glinsky in a storefront window with the New York gallery P.P.O.W. Meanwhile, he\u2019s in his booth at Liste, where four wall-hung ceramic abstractions are on view by the duo CrossLypka\u2014Tyler Cross and Kyle Lypka, who work in Oakland, California.<\/p>\n

CrossLypka\u2019s creations may bring to mind ancient relics of unknown origin or fragments of enormous animal skeletons. One very much resembles a spine. They look weathered, and they are potent, with washes of color and bits of sand left over from the production process. \u201cSomebody came in yesterday,\u201d Sharp said, \u201cand they asked, Are those whale bones?\u201d They are not, but they radiate a power and a majesty all their own.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An installation by Ruofan Chen with embedded paintings at Shower\u2019s booth at Liste. Photo by Andrew Russeth.<\/p>\n

4. Out of Many, One<\/p>\n

A single work\u2014a sloping plywood installation by the Chinese artist Ruofan Chen\u2014fills Shower gallery\u2019s booth at Liste, which runs through Sunday. It\u2019s a dramatic, confident display. At the risk of confusing things: It\u2019s also more than one work. Chen embedded seven paintings into it that depict plywood on organza.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hope is people will have a space that can house this whole thing,\u201d Katie Lee Arsac, who works at the adventurous Seoul gallery, said, \u201cbut at the same time we know that that might not be possible, so each work is also available for sale.\u201d Lee Arsac slipped on white gloves and popped out one of the panels, which are quite elegant.<\/p>\n

One of Chen\u2019s interests is the unseen labor that goes into art production, and the potential side effects that art workers encounter through exposure to various hazardous materials. Her plywood panel is hung with wires, but it\u2019s also balanced with a small, thin column of sawdust and studio debris. The project is called Counterweight, and she developed it with Shampoo, the production studio behind Shower.<\/p>\n

Chen is \u201cshowing this delicacy and fragility within the structure,\u201d Lee Arsac said, adding that the paintings \u201care almost like skins, because they\u2019re permeable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The booth of Beau Travail, of Stockholm, at Liste. Photo by Andrew Russeth<\/p>\n

5. Good Work<\/p>\n

The vast majority of the 98 booths at Liste are solo presentations. For the weary, distracted fairgoer, that is a blessing. It offers the chance to learn about an artist\u2019s work in some depth, to focus. However, it can also be nice to see a boatload of art by different people, so as to understand a gallery\u2019s approach. That\u2019s what the scrappy Stockholm space Beau Travail did this year, installing material by around a dozen artists.<\/p>\n

The artist Marie Karlberg, formerly of New York, opened Beau Travail about two-and-a-half years ago, after moving to the Swedish capital. \u201cI was really missing a space where artists would come together,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s part of my practice. I\u2019m not like an artist that like locks myself in a studio.\u201d It\u2019s named after the 1999 Claire Denis film. \u201cI think it\u2019s perfect for a gallery to have beautiful work as your name,\u201d Karlberg said.<\/p>\n

Many of the artists in her booth are also collaboration-minded, like Bernadette Van Huy (of Bernadette Corporation), who\u2019s included a photo of a model wearing an outfit she did with Supreme, and Max Pitegof and Calla Henkel, who run the New Theater Hollywood. Pitegof and Henkel sent over some of the striking black-and-white photos they shoot of all the actors who perform at their place.<\/p>\n

The artist Bruno Zhu, who was helping Karlberg man the booth, has on view a series of curiously shaped drawings. Karlberg explained: \u201cIt\u2019s called Swiss Average, and it\u2019s just pattern he made based on the size of a Swiss average penis. So, if you stitch it all together, it basically becomes a Swiss average penis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karlberg, for her part, is showing paintings at Basel Social Club of business cards for various notable art dealers and galleries, like Reena Spaulings Fine Art, where she used to work in New York. She has business cards for Beau Travail\u2014tiny ones\u2014but she seems to be taking a low-key approach to the business. \u201cI\u2019m happy when people buy work, but that\u2019s not why I\u2019m doing it, and I think it\u2019s kind of obvious,\u201d she said. \u201cI haven\u2019t had a single figurative painting in the gallery since I started.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Rise and Shine On Wednesday afternoon, the satisfying smell of yeast was emanating from Galerija Manu\u0161\u2019s booth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[1377,44448,1224,31363,27390,31362,77,42705,4069,44452,44455,44454,44456,3872,44441,44446,44440,28799,44443,44458,43953,44449,44442,44439,42706,44453,44457,44329,44447,44450,44451,44444,44445],"class_list":["post-87229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basel","tag-art-basel","tag-art-basel-parcours","tag-art-market","tag-artnet-pro","tag-artnet-news","tag-artnet-news-pro","tag-basel","tag-basel-art-week","tag-basel-social-club","tag-beau-travail","tag-bernadette-van-huy","tag-bruno-zhu","tag-calla-henkel","tag-chris-sharp","tag-contemporary-art-fair","tag-crosslypka","tag-emerging-art","tag-emerging-artists","tag-galerija-manus","tag-gallery-booths","tag-ishi-glinsky","tag-james-franco","tag-kemil-bektesi","tag-liste-2026","tag-liste-art-fair-basel","tag-marie-karlberg","tag-max-pitegof","tag-messe-basel","tag-p-p-o-w","tag-ruofan-chen","tag-shower-gallery","tag-william-feaver","tag-yveyang-gallery"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}