Art Basel Paris: October 16 - 20, 2024

Over the past decade, Math Bass has developed a lexicon of symbols—letters, bodily forms, architectural fragments, animals, bones—arranged in a variety of scores, each symbol an empty space of meaning, filled in by the context in which it finds itself. Repetition of these symbols, rather than codifying them into one solid signification, exposes the difference at the heart of each iteration; there is always a gap in meaning, something unnamable left out of and left over in the viewer’s reading—a jouissance. That these symbols are familiar only heightens our unsettling; the negative space of these compositions, a major player in Bass’s practice, adds further to the gap.

For the past three decades, Monica Bonvicini’s multifaceted practice has confronted issues of institutional critique and the politics of space in relation to gender and power. Thunder forms part of the artist’s enduring inquiry into literature and poetry. These typographical works use a complex technique of layered lacquer that simulates a wet surface, mirrored as to implicate the viewer within its sentiment: “your heart beating loud as thunder”, evoking universal experiences of passion, love or fear. 

The complex geometry of Olafur Eliasson’s suspended “lamp” works are the product of decades of research, taking the five Platonic solids as their point of departure. In Firefly nursery, three concentric polyhedrons are embedded one inside the other, with the two interior forms rotating slowly around the central axis. The inner-most form is composed of various tones of iridescent color-effect-filter glass, a special material that reflects light of a single color while allowing the remaining light to pass through it. The next layer is constructed from semi-reflective, handblown glass, which acts as a mirror from some perspectives and is transparent from others. The outer form is a rhombic dodecahedron, or eight-sided solid, in which each face has been pushed into an outward curve to form a sphere. LED spots mounted on the frame illuminate the centre and are reflected out again. The light passing through the panes and narrow gaps between the glass and the stainless-steel frame casts colorful, complex shapes and shadows onto the surrounding space. Olafur Eliasson’s major solo exhibition at MOCA, Los Angeles is on view through July 6, 2025. 

Syncopated openings for belonging and acceptance is an extension of Olafur Eliasson’s long interest in color, transparency, and layering – topics he first began addressing in watercolor paintings, to which the glass works are closely related. Both groups of works use compositions of circles and ellipses to create a sense of movement and depth or of space and time. 

Arrayed in two leaning stacks upon a driftwood shelf, colorful panes of hand-blown glass overlap to create a variety of hues, while circular and elliptical cutouts allow surprising tones to shine through the layers. Because of the inherent visual confusion of the ellipse - which can appear to be a circle viewed in perspective - the sequence can both be seen as a circle transforming into an ellipse or as a disc spinning in illusionistic space. The driftwood logs - salvaged from the coast of northern Iceland - have been planed into a shelf on one side and left raw on the other.

Since 2009, Olafur Eliasson has been engaged in a project involving a new color theory based on the prismatic colors and explored through a series of paintings on circular canvases, known collectively as the Colour experiment paintings. In Seeing painting (slowness), a pale rainbow gradient is applied to the outer circumference of the raw canvas. In the centre, an amorphous stain spreads outward as ice melts in a pool of black ink and bleach on the reverse of the canvas. As the ice melts, the ink spreads in unpredictable ways to create marks that reflect the unfolding of time. Executed in acrylic ink, Seeing painting (slowness) sits at the intersection of both Eliasson’s painting and watercolor practices. Related works are currently on view in Olafur Eliasson’s major solo exhibition at MOCA, Los Angeles, through July 6, 2025. 

Since the early 1980s, Kimsooja has used performance, film, photography, sculpture and site-specific installations to poetically meditate on the notion of painting through the language of cultural traditions in her native land, as well as the human condition via principles of “non-doing” and “non-making.”

The bottari—a traditional Korean bundle used to wrap and protect personal belongings—has become a central form, both physically and conceptually, in Kimsooja's practice. Representative of essential belongings and a nomadic lifestyle, the bottari is also a metaphor to refer to the universal concept of home and migration, but also to a transitory state. 

For more than three decades, Mark Manders has developed an endless self-portrait in the form of sculpture, still life, and architectural plans. Described by the artist as his ongoing “self-portrait as a building,” Manders’ works present mysterious and evocative tableaux that allow viewers to construct their own narrative conclusions and meanings. 

Double Clayhead on Concrete Floor was produced through an intimate logic that has now become signature to Manders' practice. Rendered in cast bronze, the work depicts two figures joined but facing away from one another in what deceptively appears to be a soft clay. In doing so, the artist blurs the line between reality and illusion, and freezes a moment in time, highlighting the fragility of each passing moment. The manipulation of material and scale generates a sense of puzzlement and awe, masterfully creating a sense of timelessness— while the sculpture seems to be just made, it is at the same time enigmatically atemporal. 

In Yuko Mohri’s Decomposition series, electrodes are inserted into fruit to measure their internal moisture levels, converting changes in resistance caused by withering or rotting, into light.

Minuscule changes occurring inside the fruit directly affect the dimness of the lights, conveying the life of fruit that continues to emerge and evolve even after its connection to the soil or tree trunk has been severed. Hinting at the history of still-life painting, Mohri’s work questions the relation between stillness and liveliness, revealing that what might seem without life is actually full of it. 

Yuko Mohri is representing Japan in this year’s Venice Biennale. Her installation Compose, is on view through November 24th. Mohri will have a major solo exhibition, On Physis, at the Artizon Museum in Tokyo, opening November 2nd, 2024. 

Dana Powell's small-scale oil paintings depict moments of transition and anticipation. They take the shape of night drives, full moons, swimming pools, elevator doors, still lifes with fruit, explosions, and peep holes. Unrelated at first look, these subjects prove malleable apparatus in demonstrating the unsettling power of the ordinary, and emotive potential of small shifts in formal painting strategies. Considered austerity is applied to Powell’s tableaus of the everyday, offering a window to the familiar and its undertow.

Magali Reus’ Clementine series are all modeled after preserve jars, precisely formulated with industrial materials at a larger-than-life scale that speak to both nostalgic authenticity and mass-produced appropriation. Works in the series take the form of the ubiquitous humble but iconic Bonne Maman jam jar, the Belgian mustard jar, or in the instance of Clementine (Bud), the two-toned terracotta Danone yoghurt pot, all typically marked with domestic personalizations pertaining to Reus’ past. With subtle romantic connotations, the sculptural facsimile echoes the once preserved yoghurt flavors through small impressions on the side of the jar (that of the peach and of the nut) and daisy’s on the lids, simulating the iconic French game of He loves me...he loves me not. Protruding from the wall, Reus’ first diptych within the Clementine series are like two friends, or soon to be lovers, and thus both a vessel and a lens for the global and the personal.

Magali Reus’ Curtis works were conceived for her recent solo presentation at the Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany (2024), which focused on particular “actors” linked to the natural environment surrounding the museum - the park, town and agricultural areas - and how these are embedded in various social, ecological and economic networks. Inspired by works in the museum’s collection made with curator and publisher René Block, Reus has transformed the drawer form in Block’s editions to function as a framing device. The sculptural flowers are based on botanical drawings made by British botanist William Curtis (1746-1799), which are also part of the museum’s collection. 

Analia Saban’s Copper Tapestry (GeForce 256 Graphics Card, Nvidia, 1999) is a continuation in a series of works where the artist introduces non-traditional materials into the process of tapestry weaving. Thin strips of copper traverse a linen warp to create an intricate design - a representation of an iconic 3D graphics card from the 1990s - a milestone in the development of computer graphics. More than two centuries ago, weaving production was accelerated by the improvements in technology possible through the Industrial Revolution, and Saban’s loom operates on a similar system. The artist's computerized loom operates following a binary code - and similarly the looms of yesteryear followed a comparable binary system. Saban’s choice of subject matter therefore is not coincidental. 

Complex computer systems that infiltrate many aspects of our daily lives rely on a basic programmed language that is, at its essence, not so dissimilar to the analogue language of weaving. And so the confluence of process and content comes to the fore - Saban’s tapestry, made using proto-digital technology, depicts a graphics card - the very advancement that translated computational information to images in a digital space. Saban here is interested in the pursuit of reality in the depictions of the world on a computer screen through perception and dimensionality - as always the artist is working at the edges of two and three dimensional space.

Informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences, and engineering, Tomás Saraceno's work invites viewers to consider geometries and phenomena of the natural world as adaptable models for the ways we live and interact.  

Foam SB 110/16p is comprised of a complex geometric structure of translucent iridescent plexiglas that suggests the cell-like membranes of bubbles that emerge when oil is shaken with water. As in an organic system, this work is composed of many parts all similar but all different from one another, whose interconnected elements capture the iconic and intricate complexity of Saraceno's oeuvre.

In various cultures across the world the spider occupies a central place as a source of wisdom and divination: from ancient Nazca civilization of Peru to contemporary Cameroon. For over a decade, arachnology has been a source of inspiration and research for Tomás Saraceno, particularly the expanding spatial structures of spiderwebs as a model and metaphor for more-than-human technologies of settlement and networking. The work’s title reveals the technical basis for each sculptural element; such as the genus and species of the spider collaborators and the amount of time spent constructing their webs. 

The objects themselves defy the framework of their titles, as the intricate web formations are clearly not of human logic, yet are representative of complex social structures that exist in the natural world. Supervising the various types of spiderwebs' development, the artist touched upon key principles of social organization—cooperation, cohabitation and hybridity.

Through complex constellations of objects and a proliferation of images, Sarah Sze expands upon the never- ending stream of visual narratives that we negotiate daily, from magazines and newspapers, television and iPhones, to cyberspace and outer space. Finally Forever evokes the generative and recursive process of image-making in a world where consumption and production are more interdependent, where the beginning of one idea is the ending of another— and where sculpture gives rise to images, and images to sculpture. Sze expands her work by embedding her nuanced sculptural language into the material surfaces of painting and into the digital realm—collapsing distinctions between two, three and four dimensions. Her practice fundamentally alters our sense of time, place, and memory by transforming our experiences of the physical world around us.

Sarah Sze’s installation, Metronome, is on view at ARoS, Denmark through October 20th.