Art Basel 2024

Long engaged in freeing form and matter from the strictures and false oppositions between figuration and abstraction, Oliver Lee Jackson’s images open up spaces for contemplation and interpretation, as well as encounters with seen and unseen worlds. Lisson Gallery brings to Basel the large-scale 2024 work Untitled Painting (2.20.24), rendered in oil paints and spray enamel on plywood. Elsewhere, American Camouflage 7 (2024) by Josh Kline forms part of a news series by the artist that features compositions of contemporary life, arranged in layered camouflage patterns. Cast in resin, Kline meticulously assembles artefacts of consumer culture and its wasteful packaging, which in this example comprise fast food, corn, rubber gloves and cardboard.

Sean Scully’s Wall of Light series began following the artist’s first of several influential trips to Mexico in 1983, where he portrayed the patterns of light and shadows experienced on the stacked stones of local walls and ruins. The 2022 oil on canvas Wall of Light Green Mountain maintains Scully’s commitment to pure abstraction, and exemplifies his capacity to capture light. Further painting highlights include Carmen Herrera’s 1958 work in acrylic on burlap, Untitled (14 Orange and Red); Sarah Cunningham’s Earth Song (2024); and 华子抓鹅, Huazi Catching a Goose (2024) by Liu Xiaodong. Depicting a local man catching a goose in the artist’s hometown, Liu’s work also evokes complex traditional symbolism around victory, freedom, and constraint.

Otobong Nkanga’s Midnight Study I (2021) is a densely woven textile combining various types of yarns, while PLEASURE (2024) by Jack Pierson is a new example from the artist’s ongoing body of word sculptures, formed from reclaimed, discarded signage letters. Revealed inside the booth is Response (2024) from Lee Ufan’s long-term series of the same name defined by their singular sweeps of acrylic, and Anish Kapoor’s Untitled (2024), which explores the artist’s interest in the colour red and in blood as a ritual material through painting.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s rigorous and scientific approach to subject matter characterises his lifelong commitment to experimentation, which has seen the artist creating ambitious sculptural models and public commissions from seemingly impossible mathematical equations. Works such as Mathematical Model 022: Generalized Helicoid Developable Surface on an Ellipsoid of Revolution (2023) combine advanced Japanese machine tools with computer technology to produce striking physical representations of these equations in pure aluminium. The artist’s first solo show with Lisson continues in New York through 2 August, alongside ‘Hugh Hayden: Hughmans’. A new work by Hayden, utilising grouse feathers meticulously inlaid into cardboard tubes to give the illusion of woodgrain, is among the sculptural highlights of the booth, as well as a work from Ryan Gander’s I be… series of antiqued mirrors with cast marble dust sheets, and Pedro Reyes’ marble Azomalli (2024). 

Having recently joined the gallery’s artist roster, Lisson presents new pieces from Dana Awartani’s ongoing series, Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your broken bones in Basel, a site-specific installation of which is currently on view as part of the 60th International Art Exhibition–La Biennale di Venezia. Also with work in the main Biennale exhibition, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’, Lisson’s Art Basel booth features Olga de Amaral’s luminous Soles A – one of a series that relates closely to her larger-scale Estelas works with their use of layered gold leaf and gesso.

At Art Unlimited, Lisson is pleased to present a major new photographic work by Hiroshi Sugimoto in collaboration with Fraenkel Gallery. Renowned as a master of black and white photography, Mt Fuji (2022) marks a rare foray into colour, presentsingan epic panorama transferred directly via pigment print onto 12 washi paper partitions that create a traditional Japanese folding screen or byōbu, complete with specially crafted hinges. This format, typical also in Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese cultures, allows for a breadth of image unachievable in any other medium, marrying a functional barrier that suggests retreat, modesty or reflection with an immersive experience akin to entering or walking through the actual scene depicted.

First shown in his solo exhibition ‘Punto!’ at Lisson Gallery in September, 2023, Ryan Gander’s School of languages (2022) presents us with a life-sized, animatronic female gorilla, who seems to hide beneath a ubiquitous office desk. A strong odour of damp and urine emanates from behind the office desk, blown by a whirring electronic fan. The animal does not to make eye contact with the viewer, but does display a desire to learn, attempting to teach itself to count by using its fingers to notate units.