15 works to tell the story of 2020 with art, from the viewing rooms of Art Basel

As has been known since last June, Art Basel, the world’s leading contemporary art fair, canceled its 2020 edition due to concerns about the Covid-19 contagion. This, however, has not stopped the organization headed by Marc Spiegler (director of Art Basel) and Alban Fischer (director of Art Basel digital) from going online, and just this weekend the fair launched the OVR:2020 project, a series of thematic viewing rooms on works created in 2020: the 100 galleries involved have thus brought to the virtual Art Basel six works each, with one common thread, namely it is always works produced this year. There are artists who have read current events, others who have fallen back on intimate reflections, there are the latest stylistic and formal research: a kind of summary of how art has begun this new decade of the 2000s. We have selected fifteen works, in our opinion quite significant and capable of condensing the 2020s, thus told here through contemporary art.

1. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Feeling Really Alone (2020; watercolor and ink on paper; 45.7 x 35.6 cm)
Submitted by: Altman Siegel. Cost: $35,000

“The mask has always been a way to hide one’s vulnerability. Today, masks are interfaces that mutate through their ability to connect, merging the past with the present through their use”: this is how Lynn Hershman Leeson (Cleveland, 1941) expressed it in 2014. Altman Siegel Gallery is presenting in the virtual edition of Art Basel a single show by the American artist who applies a “2020 filter” to a recurring theme in her art, that of the masked woman. In this case, Hershman Leeson focuses on developments in the social importance attached to masks, with which we have all become familiar this year. And in the specifics of this work, the title itself is eloquent in explaining the masked woman’s loneliness and her saddened gaze.

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Feeling Really Alone

2. Ludovic Nkoth, 1pm in Montauk (2020; watercolor on paper; 50.8 x 40.6 cm)
Submitted by: François Ghebaly. Cost: $5,000.

The very young Ludovic Nkoth (Cameroon, 1994), born in Africa but raised in New York City where he moved at the age of thirteen, is the star of François Ghebaly’s solo show and brings portraits of friends, relatives, fictional characters and himself to the Art Basel viewing rooms: the idea of 26-year-old Nkoth, in this series of works, is to ask what “home” is, what feelings evoke the concept of home, how one knows when one has found a home. His works thus speak of search, displacement, happiness of discovery, but they also evoke childhood memories, traditions, old stories told by old people.

Ludovic Nkoth, 1pm in Montauk

3. Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2020 (2020; installation, mixed media)
Presented by: neugerriemschneider. Cost: $100-250,000.

The project untitled 2020 (morgen ist die frage) by Rirkrit Tiravanija (Buenos Aires, 1961) was conceived especially for this virtual Art Basel. The starting point is a phrase, “Tomorrow is the question” (“Tomorrow is the problem”) borrowed from the jazz musician Ornette Coleman’s album of the same name. For this project, Tiravanija printed the phrase, in nine different languages (those of the countries where the artist has lived and worked: Amharic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai), on a large number of T-shirts. The printing process (the T-shirts were then stacked to create a sculpture reminiscent of Donald Judd’s minimalism) was continuously filmed in a live broadcast, where the audience could ask questions, recorded by Tiravanija and reproduced on a large canvas created from newspapers filled with news stories about social and political events in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The goal, Tiravanija points out, is to try to understand “what the problem is, if tomorrow is the problem.”

Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2020

4. Elisabeth Neudörfl, Five (2020; c-print photograph, 51 x 76 cm).
Submitted by: Barbara Wien. Cost: less than $10,000

German photographer Elisabeth Neudörfl (Darmstadt, 1968) traveled to Hong Kong at the height of the coronavirus epidemic (between Feb. 25 and March 5, 2020) to make the project Five, whose title refers to the five key issues raised by the protest movement against the Chinese government. In the week that Neudörfl took the 96 shots that make up the project, the streets of Hong Kong were deserted due to the government-imposed lockdown, and in the meantime the traces left by the protest (e.g., graffiti) had already been largely removed.

Elisabeth Neudörfl, Five

5. Alicja Kwade, MatterMotion (2020; lacquered steel and stone, 600 x 518.2 x 94.8 cm)
Submitted by: kamel mennour. Cost: $250-500,000.

MatterMotion is a sculpture by Polish-German artist Alicja Kwade (Katowice, 1979) intended to reflect on time, perception, and scientific inquiry. The work, imbued with poetry, consists of a neat, geometric steel structure holding a few shapeless stones in precarious balance: one can read in it attempts to order the world, which, however, always remains subordinate to the laws of the universe and uncertainty, the exploration of doubt, the possibility of understanding whether there are alternative ways of measuring natural phenomena. With his works, Kwade wants to emphasize the mystery and absurdity of the human condition in order to stimulate our ability to reflect on ourselves.

Alicja Kwade, MatterMotion

6. Mitch Epstein, Robert E. Lee Memorial / Marcus David Peters Circle, Richmond, Virginia, 2020 (2020; photograph, chromogenic print, 147.3 x 114.3 cm)
Presented by: Yancey Richardson Gallery. Cost: $25,000

The Robert E. Lee Monument in Richmond, Virginia’s capital city, became world famous during the Black Lives Matter protests and has become the subject of countless photographs, including this one by American Mitch Epstein (Holyoke, 1952), who portrayed the monument covered in graffiti and signs left by the people who gathered here to demonstrate and protest but also to remember, pray, study, and dance, in a moment of collective participation in a moment of significant historical significance. The work is part of a series entitled Property Rights in which Epstein investigates the United States understood both as a place and as an idea: the narrative thus focuses on certain aspects such as citizenship, rights, fundamental freedoms, and the relationship to the land.

Mitch Epstein, Robert E. Lee Memorial / Marcus David Peters Circle, Richmond, Virginia, 2020

7. Etal Adnan, Satellites 14 (2020; oil on canvas, 22 x 33 cm)
Presented by: Galerie Lelong & Co. Cost: $50-100,000

Paris-based Galerie Lelong & Co. comes to Art Basel’s fall viewing rooms with a project titled Cosmic Dancer, named after a famous song by Marc Bolan’s T. Rex: there is a line that says “the fear that dwells inside a man / what it’s like to be alone” (“the fear that dwells inside a human being / what it’s like to be alone”). The works in the small exhibition thus focus on the combination of fear-optimism. And the work of the great Lebanese poet and artist Etel Adnan (Beirut, 1925), who at the age of 95 does not stop producing works dense with lyricism, should also be read in this sense. His “satellites,” in his typical radiant and colorful style, created in his Paris home, represent a new subject in his production, and hark back to a dream dimension, to memories of times gone by, when the artist saw the lights of the stars and the moon in the Middle Eastern desert.

Etal Adnan, Satellites 14

8. Ramiro Gomez, Two people walking in front of The Abbey, June 9th, 2020, 10:30 a.m. (2020; acrylic on canvas, 30.5 x 22.9 cm)
Presented by: P. P.O.W. Cost: $10,000

“I have always painted people who should be the center of attention but were not before. And then I realized with my latest exhibitions that I should show more of my identity. And that complicates the narratives I present. I’m the queer son of Mexican immigrants, and I shouldn’t avoid saying that for fear of reactions.” Thus the young California artist Ramiro Gomez (San Bernardino, 1986), the protagonist of the solo show at the P.P.O.W. gallery with works about the environments in which Gomez himself lives and which therefore narrate his everyday life, particularly that of Hispanic workers: domestic workers, garbage collectors, sanitation workers. A cross-section of California’s Mexican community in the months of the pandemic.

Ramiro Gomez, Two people walking in front of The Abbey, June 9th, 2020, 10:30 a.m.

9. Sam Durant, Remember in November (2020; electric sign with vinyl text, 193 x 241 x 20.3 cm)
Presented by: Blum & Poe. Cost: $65,000.

American artist Sam Durant (Seattle, 1961) created this work, Remember in November (“Remember in November”) as a monument to the highly divisive time the United States is currently experiencing and which will emerge even more when the next presidential election is held, calling Americans to the polls, in fact, in November 2020. The work is part of a series of lightboxes that merge this medium, typical of store and mall signs, with the language of protest signs (the lettering is all handmade, with typical billboard lettering), as a symbol of the period of tensions we are currently going through.

Sam Durant, Remember in November

10. Namsal Siedlecki, Deposition VIII (2020; calcite crystals, jute, stainless steel, 51 x 36 x 5 cm)
Presented by: Warehouse. Cost: $9,000.

This work by the U.S.-based artist, but Italian by adoption, Namsal Siedlecki (Greenfield, 1986), who lives and works in Seggiano, in the Maremma region of Grosseto, Italy, is brought to the Art Basel viewing rooms by one of the few Italian galleries present (Rome-based Magazzino) and is an interesting example of the complex technical research of the artist, one of the most promising on the international scene. The series, which is titled Deposition, is made through a process of sedimentation of limestone material found in the water of a fountain in St. Nectaire, France: Siedlecki causes the material to accumulate by leaving it underwater for between four and six months, during which time the calcite undergoes a transformation, becoming a crystallized, shiny surface. The long process required to create the work, and which harks back to the research on the material by several Italian artists since the 1950s (think for example of Alberto Burri), also takes on symbolic aspects, activating a reflection on time, slowness and the action of the elements.

Namsal Siedlecki, Deposition VIII

11. Mickalene Thomas, Jet Blue #14 (2020; color photograph, paper fragments, rhinestones and Swarovski crystals on paper, 123.2 x 92.1 cm)
Submitted by: Lévy Gorvy. Sold

The work of Mickalene Thomas (Camden, 1971) explores the identities of black women while also evoking their history. This work, Jet Blue #14, is part of a series made from images of pin-up calendars from the 1970s, produced by Jet magazine, and which even then sought to move away from Eurocentric concepts of “beauty.” In this work, Thomas recontextualizes Jet ’s women to give the model a sculptural look that results from the mix of materials of which the image is composed and to actualize the image. “I’ve always thought about how, as a woman of color, I grew up to be the woman I am, and how I see myself in others,” the artist says.

Mickalene Thomas, Jet Blue #14

12. Thomas Hirschhorn, Home (Chat-Poster) (2020; cardboard, wood, prints, marker, stickers, crystal, 240 x 125 cm)
Presented by: Galerie Chantal Crousel. Cost: $60,000.

Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn (Bern, 1957) reflects on technology, imagining a Whatsapp chat with one of the prominent figures of 20th-century thought, writer and philosopher Simone Weil. An impossible dialogue that takes shape thanks to art, and thanks to art transcends time. “I was struck by her positions, her courage, her determination, her commitment, her style (raw, direct, mystical, logical),” said the artist. “I love the fact that she was a soldier, a healer, a secular saint, an extremist, a thinker, a light. Simone Weil’s philosophy is really artistic, it’s plastic, it’s physical, it’s in motion, it’s a new form. She acted as an activist, in her work and in her life, and her ability to be absolute, which I admire, gives beauty to her thought.”

Thomas Hirschhorn, Home (Chat-Poster)

13. Mark Manders, Composition with Two-Colors (2005-2020; painted wood and print on paper, 46.7 x 33.8 x 3.7 cm)
Presented by: Zeno X Gallery. Cost: $18,000

This two-color composition by Dutch artist Mark Manders (Volkel, 1968) is the latest in a series begun fifteen years ago, Notional Newspapers, created from newspapers containing English words arranged in random order. It is a reflection on language: the newspaper contains words that potentially subtend infinite meanings, but there are no words to describe the colors used for the two wooden panels. And as a result, colors trump language: in an age characterized by clashes over identities, Manders, in the viewing room of the Flemish Zeno X Gallery, instead shows works that have erased all reference to race and gender, creating archetypes instead of characters or narratives.

Mark Manders, Composition with Two-Colors

14. Paul Anthony Smith, Untitled (2020; picotage on ink print and spray paint on board, 196.5 x 264.2 cm)
Presented by: Jack Shainman Gallery. Cost: $50-100,000.

Young Paul Anthony Smith (St. Ann’s Bay, 1988) presents six works at Art Basel that stem from his experience as a Jamaican immigrant in the United States: resulting in works that focus on cultural identity. The beach is part of Jamaica’s cultural identity: “because I come from the Caribbean,” says the artist, “I often think of the beach: the smell of salt water, the warm sun, palm trees, spending quiet moments on the sand, bathhouses, contemplating what could be one’s personal space.” This work is about freedom: the freedom that people enjoy when they stand on the beach.

Paul Anthony Smith, Untitled

15. Sophie von Hellermann, Fairy Dance (2020; acrylic on canvas, 140 x 160 cm)
Presented by: Pilar Corrias. Cost: $10-25,000.

German artist Sophie von Hellermann (Munich, 1975) created this work during the lockdown, which she spent in England, in the countryside. It is a dance of fairies, taken from the Shakespearean imagery of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.Sophie von Hellermann’s paintings often include images and characters that arise from her imagination. Imagination that, this year, takes on a special significance: the artist said she felt the urgency to paint such a scene in a time of global illness and isolation, uncertainty and death. A scenario against which to oppose the joy of spring and summer, with a dance born of a dream.

Sophie von Hellermann, Fairy Dance

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