In Focus
This year at Art Basel, we are delighted to present a range of 20th-century masterworks and new works direct from the studio. Ahead of the fair, discover a selection of these works ‘In Focus.’
Rashid Johnson
The first painting to debut from Rashid Johnson’s highly anticipated new series, ‘Soul Painting “Raise It Up”’ (2024) expands the artist’s distinctive and celebrated visual lexicon with expressive and physical explorations of the self through mark-making, and new investigations into animism.
Henry Taylor
First exhibited in ‘Henry Taylor: B Side,’ a major survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2022 that travelled to The Whitney Museum of American Art the following year, ‘Untitled’ (2022) is a poignant, large-scale installation. It comprises 35 life-size, headless mannequins, configured as a meeting of the 20th-century American political organization, the Black Panthers.
Philip Guston
Philip Guston’s late work brims with a personal vocabulary, at once quotidian and idiosyncratic. In his extraordinary ‘Orders’ (1978), a cluster of shoes silhouetted against a pink and blue sky rises above a blood red horizon line.
Alina Szapocznikow
Challenging traditional conceptions of sculpture and classical figuration, ‘Sculpture-lampe XIII’ embodies Alina Szapocznikow’s most radical and subversive work, both in its subject matter and materiality. Szapocznikow substituted the typical slender stem she used for most of her functional desk lamps with an erect penis, creating a humorous take on contemporaneous phallocentric sculpture.
George Rouy
George Rouy’s dynamic and signature use of the human figure, vexed with desire, alienation and crisis, speaks to the extremities of our time, resulting in portraits of identity in a globalized and technologically driven 21st Century. Within the elusive group scene ‘Stains on the Scenery’ (2024), certain elements of the body are distorted, highlighted or emphasized, signaling altered psychological states.
David Smith
An innovative and assertive piece, ‘Aggressive Character’ holds a pivotal position in David Smith’s oeuvre, embodying the recurring visual themes that define the artist’s practice. Having been on loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. for thirty-five years, this work marks the first time that stainless steel serves as the primary medium in his sculpture, a material Smith was attracted to due to its interaction with light.
Flora Yukhnovich
In Flora Yukhnovich’s immersive paintings, glimpses of art historical styles are spliced with references drawn from contemporary films, music, literary sources and consumer culture. ‘Fast and Loose’ (2024), a new work by London-based artist, explores contemporary expressions of the idea of Bacchanalia, ancient Roman festivals celebrating Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, freedom and ecstasy.
Louise Bourgeois
‘Woman with Packages’ (1987 – 1993) reflects Louise Bourgeois’s deeply personal and all-encompassing approach to sculpture. The motif developed over five decades, materializing in her famous Personage sculptures during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and later appearing in reimagined form in the mid-1980s, in bronze. Yet the marble version carries special emotional charge: to Bourgeois, the process of carving stone was highly cathartic, allowing her to release her anxieties and aggression.
