Art Basel 2025

At Art Unlimited 2025, Lee Ufan presents his Relatum (2005–2023) sculptures which embody his minimalist philosophy, focusing on relationships rather than objects. Each piece consists of industrial steel plates, symbolizing modernity and human intervention, with raw stones, which he sees as belonging to an ‘unknown world.’ thus creating a dialogue between contrasting materials. This reflects the dynamic in his Correspondence paintings, where brushstrokes interact with blank space. Rooted in the Mono-ha movement, Relatum challenges Western materialism by shifting art from being a static object to an experience of encounter. His installations engage space without dominating it, encouraging mindful presence. Viewers are invited to slow down to sense gravity, silence, and the relationship between nature, humanity, and time. On the booth, Lee Ufan presents Response (2025) defined by singular sweeps of acrylic, expanding on his concept of anchoring a work to its “encounter”, a moment in time and space when the brush marks the canvas.

Dalton Paula shows oil and golden leaf on canvas Xica Manicongo (2025), which belongs to Dalton Paula's Full Body Portraits series, a significant body of work comprising 16 paintings that form part of Paula's reimaginations of influential Afro-Brazilian historical figures from Brazil's colonial past. This presentation at Art Basel precedes Paula’s inaugural solo exhibition in New York this September.

Sean Scully presents an oil on linen work, Wall of Light Tappan, 12. (2022). Scully's work has shifted the paradigm in American abstraction from Minimalism and its reduced vocabulary towards an emotional form of abstraction, returning to the metaphor and spirituality found in the European painting tradition. While monumental in scale and gesture, his work retains an undeniable delicacy and sincerity of emotion.

Lisson Gallery’s booth showcases Otobong Nkanga’s monumental new tapestry Cadence - Teardrop (2025), a work that fuses abstract forms with compelling imagery to conjure oceanic depths, sprawling ecosystems, and galaxies. A series of veiled images are interwoven throughout the many layers of the tapestry, exploring states of censorship and visibility, and social and ecological turmoil. Nkanga's site-specific commission, Cadence, is on view at The Museum of Modern Art in New York until 27 July, and runs concurrently with her solo exhibition, Each Seed a Body, at the Nasher Sculpture Center (through August 2025).

The gallery will also present aluminum painted mirror by Anish Kapoor, Gold to Burgundy Over Gold Satin (2025) which sucks the viewer into the vertiginous concavity of their aura and pigmented voids that confound our perception. Kapoor also presents Untitled (2012) a visceral and intense painting representing the ritualistic nature of his work.

Nearby, Olga de Amaral’s linen, gesso, and acrylic work Lienzos C y D (2015) restricts her medium to acrylic paint on linen, leaving dyes behind. Amaral spins base matter into fields of colour and weaves tectonic lines through space, confidently testing the borders between crafted object and the work of art. Carmen Herrera presents an acrylic on burlap Paris painting, Untitled (1948) from the same period as her current show The Paris Years, 1948 – 1953 at Lisson New York. A master of crisp lines and contrasting chromatic planes, Herrera created symmetry, asymmetry, and an infinite variety of movement, rhythm, and spatial tension across the canvas with the most unobtrusive paint application.

Other highlights on the booth include Leiko Ikemura’s Female Genesis (2016), coinciding with her solo exhibition Talk to the sky, seeking light at Lisson New York. Ikemura seamlessly shifts between luminous, otherworldly and often monumental oil paintings, introspective drawings and watercolours, glazed terracotta sculptures, glass and ceramics. Tishan Hsu presents Skin-screen: revealed (quadriptych) (2023), that follows his presentation at MO.CO Montpellier Contemporain and reimagines the human body through innovative materials and digital processes. Hélio Oiticica showcases Untitled (1955), gouache on cardboard which plays with geometric form and vibrant colours.

Sculptural highlights include Tunga’s Untitled (Case) (2008–2012), which reflects his exploration of energetic relationships between materials—an approach intensified in the 1990s with the introduction of magnets—and his integration of installation elements with 'instaurations,' a term he coined for works activated by performance. Kelly Akashi presents Merletto Ritratto (Lace Portrait) (2024), consisting of blown glass, bronze hands, and lacework. Her repeated use of the hand as a motif serves as a symbol for Akashi’s ongoing investigation into the temporality of the human experience. Hugh Hayden’s The Odd Couple (2025) considers the anthropomorphisation of the natural world as a visceral lens for exploring the human condition.