Program through spring 2018

Ungestalt
May 19–August 13, 2017
Opening: Thursday, May 18

Ungestalt, a somewhat untranslatable German term, describes something that struggles against delineation, indeed against the wholeness suggested by “Gestalt.” Maybe something that both is a form, and undoes that form, comes closest to this term that itself escapes capture. Taken as the starting point for a group show, Ungestalt brings together an ensemble of works from fifteen artists and a collective, from varied generations, each of whom has responded to their moment with works that court material, perceptual, or conceptual volatility.

Spread across the five ground-floor galleries of Kunsthalle Basel, the exhibition features new and existing pieces by Caroline Achaintre, Olga Balema, Joachim Bandau, Trisha Donnelly, Marcel Duchamp, Michaela Eichwald, Florence Jung, Eric N. Mack, Liz Magor, Park McArthur, Pakui Hardware, Nathalie Perrin, Tomo Savić-Gecan, Lucie Stahl, Alina Szapocznikow, and Adrián Villar Rojas.

Ungestalt is generously supported by Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte and the Isaac Dreyfus-Bernheim Foundation.

Yan Xing: Dangerous Afternoon
June 2–August 27, 2017
Opening: Thursday, June 1

For Yan Xing’s (b. in 1986 in Chongqing, China; lives and works in Beijing and Los Angeles) first institutional solo exhibition in Switzerland, the artist presents a newly commissioned installation entitled Dangerous Afternoon: a fictive exhibition by a fictive curator whose fantasy life is the libidinal undercurrent to the project. Its various components, including sculptural elements, readymade objects, filmic works, traces of a performance, and a series of staged black-and-white photographs, conspire to convey something of the backstory of the fictive curator without explaining it explicitly.

Like nearly all of Yan Xing’s oeuvre, Dangerous Afternoon blurs fact and speculation, the public and private spheres, the art object and display structures, in a project that choreographs “history” and the viewer equally. The artist will present a new film on June 14, 2017, containing clues that unravel the backstory that sits at the heart of his entire project, which thereafter will become an integral part of the installation.

The exhibition is generously supported by Jackson Tang, with additional support by the Davidoff Art Initiative and the H2 Foundation for Arts and Education.

Adam Linder
September 8–28, 2017
Opening: Thursday, September 7

Adam Linder (b. 1983 in Sydney; lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles) is preoccupied with choreography, taking aim at the ways performing bodies are transacted and experienced. For his first institutional solo show in Switzerland, he presents the newly commissioned Choreographic Service #5, the largest in scale of his “choreographic services” to date. Four performers use elaborate costumes with modular forms to create, over the duration of the exhibition, ever-changing architectonic formations that rethink the relationship between a theatrical sensibility and the exhibition space.

The exhibition is generously supported by Peter Handschin.

On the last day of Adam Linder’s show, a ceremony will be held to pass the exhibition space over to Shahryar Nashat, the incoming exhibitor. Though autonomous, Linder’s and Nashat’s respective solo exhibitions are conceived with reciprocity between them—by way of several shared elements. This “structuring handshake” will be underscored on the opening evening of Nashat’s show, September 28, 2017, during which the public is invited to witness The Handover.

Shahryar Nashat
September 29, 2017–January 7, 2018
Opening: Thursday, September 28

Shahryar Nashat (b. 1975 in Geneva; lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles) is preoccupied with sculpture and video, taking aim at the dynamics of desire and the need for representation. For his largest institutional solo show to date, Nashat presents a newly commissioned ensemble of works, including a film that interweaves autobiographical fragments and technoid aesthetics to address the life and currency of the image, which itself emerges as a quasi-protagonist of the film. The film is presented on imposing screen elements-cum-sculptures alongside a group of altar-like wax sculptures that amplify the question that permeates the exhibition: is not the death of an image like the death of a body?

The exhibition is generously supported by Martin Hatebur with with additional support from the Isaac Dreyfus-Bernheim Foundation and the Erna and Curt Burgauer Foundation. Nashat’s new film received production support from Lafayette Anticipations - Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin, Paris.

Exposed Exhibitions
Fotoarchiv der Kunsthalle Basel
September 22–November 12, 2017
Opening: Thursday, September 21

The photo archive of Kunsthalle Basel testifies to more than one hundred years of exhibition making at the institution through nearly 25,000 photographs, a selection of which is exposed to the light again in this exhibition. An array of photographs and documents give insights into the history of one of Switzerland’s oldest and still most active institutions of contemporary art. These will be shown alongside newly commissioned artworks by Cécile Hummel, Esther Hunziker, Doris Lasch, Raoul Müller, and Werner von Mutzenbecher, which reflect on the archive and the institution’s long history of exhibiting the now. The show, curated by Sören Schmeling, head of Kunsthalle Basel’s photo archive, with the assistance of Mara Berger, commemorates the archive’s own ongoing processes of restoration, classification, and digitalization.

Initial research for the exhibition was supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

Regionale 18
November 25, 2017–January 21, 2018
Opening: Saturday, November 25

For our 18th edition of Regionale, made this year in collaboration with the cultural festival Culturescapes, the Greek Norwegian artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis curates an exhibition that reflects on the tri-national Basel region and its diverse artistic practices.

For further information and image requests, please contact press [​at​] kunsthallebasel.ch.

*(1) Joachim Bandau, Der Tänzer, 1968. Courtesy the artist; Galerie Thomas Fischer, Berlin; and Galerie Mark Müller, Zurich. (2) Yan Xing, The Story of Shame, 2015. Courtesy the artist. (3) Adam Linder, Choreographic Service No.4 – Some Strands of Support, 2016, at the Liverpool Biennial. Photo: Mark McNulty. Courtesy the artist and Silberkuppe, Berlin. (4) Shahryar Nashat, Hard Up for Support, 2016, at the Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin. Photo: Andrea Rosetti. Courtesy the artist; Rodeo, London; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; and Silberkuppe, Berlin. (5) Contact print of the exhibition Peter Fischli und David Weiss at Kunsthalle Basel, 1985. Courtesy Fischli Weiss Archive, Zurich.