Fairs & Collecting

June 12–18, 2023, Hall 1, booth U52
Messe Basel
artbasel.com

Art Basel Unlimited 2023 features ten exhibition prints from Richard Avedon’s photographic series In the American West (1979–84). To produce In the American West, Avedon spent five years traveling through twenty-one western states, photographing more than a thousand people. Using natural light and a white backdrop, he emphasized his sitters’ poses and expressions, picturing ordinary people with striking immediacy. These ten oversize prints were selected by the artist to hang in the windows of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, for the inaugural exhibition of the series in 1985.

Launched in 2000, Unlimited is an exhibition platform for exciting large-scale projects that transcend the limits of the standard booth.

Giuseppe Penone has been named 2024’s Artist of the Year by Prinsessan Estelles Kulturstiftelse (preks), a foundation established in 2019 by Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel and named for their daughter, Princess Estelle, with the mission of promoting cultural activities in the country. Every year, the chosen artist is invited to create a monumental, site-specific work to be permanently installed within Prinsessan Estelles Skulpturpark, a sculpture park at Royal Djurgården in Stockholm. Penone’s sculpture, The Inner Flow of Life (2022), will be unveiled on May 30, 2024.

February 9–March 23, 2024
AlUla, Saudi Arabia
desertx.org

Giuseppe Penone’s sculpture La logica del vegetale – Metamorfosi (Vegetal Logic – Metamorphosis) (2024) is installed in an ancient desert canyon in the Arabian Peninsula as part of Desert X AlUla 2024. The 17-meter-tall (almost 56-foot-tall) cast bronze chestnut tree lies on its side with gnarled roots exposed, surrounded by pieces of fossilized trees, revealing the interdependence between sculpture and nature across geological time. This is the third edition of Desert X AlUla, a collaboration between Desert X and the Royal Commission for AlUla established to advance new cultural dialogue through art. Curated by Maya El Khalil and Marcello Dantas, the selection of works explores the theme “In the Presence of Absence” and asks the question “What cannot be seen?”