Kukje Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel 2023 at Messe Basel from June 15 to 18, 2023. The world's largest and most celebrated art fair will once again enliven Basel and its surrounding areas with an abundance of arts and culture over the course of a week, providing both in-person and online visitors a superlative cultural experience that integrates online programs—such as Online Viewing Rooms and virtual exhibition tours—with the more traditional fair-going. Art Basel's 2023 edition will feature 284 top-tier international galleries, featuring more than 4,000 artists working across the genres of painting, sculpture, photography, and digital media. The fair will introduce different sectors including Galleries, the fair's main sector; Unlimited, a sector unique to Art Basel, dedicated to 76 exceptional projects that challenge traditional parameters by employing methods including experimental installations, sculptures, murals, large-scale photography, and video projections; Parcours, introducing 24 site-specific works around the city of Basel; Conversations, a platform for contemporary art discourse across 12 panels featuring over 50 of today's most inspiring cultural figures; and an outdoor installation at the Messeplatz by renowned Moroccan artist Latifa Echakhch. Meanwhile, the Kabinett sector—dedicated to introducing curated and thematic presentations in a separate section within the main booth—will be making its debut in Basel, featuring 14 galleries participating in Galleries.
Kukje Gallery will introduce a comprehensive selection of works by renowned Korean and international artists who each hold a unique place in modern and contemporary art history. This includes the father of Korean geometric abstraction Lee Seung Jio's Nucleus (1974), a painting that depicts the artist's signature 'pipe' motif in a vertical composition, conveying his fascination with the industrialized society. Featured alongside Lee's work is Wook-kyung Choi's Untitled (Year unknown), an abstraction imbued with vibrant hues and powerful yet precise brushstrokes. While her vital historical importance has been affirmed with landmark exhibitions, including Women in Abstraction (Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, 2021-2022), Wook-kyung Choi, Alice's Cat (The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, 2021-2022), and Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70 (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2023), Choi will once again be the subject of a solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery this September, in time for the 2023 edition of Frieze Seoul. The booth will also present Kyungah Ham's Needling Whisper, Needle Country/SMS Series in Camouflage/Are you lonely too? C 03-01-02 (2018-2019), featuring a muted palette that delivers a subdued energy. Ham is best known for her meticulously hand-embroidered painting series, created in collaboration with North Korean artisans in a clandestine production process that confronts Korea's division.
Also on view will be Haegue Yang's Sonic Droplets – Cobalt (2023), consisting of cobalt blue and silver bells that hang from ceiling to floor, dividing or filling their surrounding space in a curtain-like format. Once activated, the sounds of the bells evoke the function they have been historically associated with, serving as a connection between the human and spiritual worlds in religious practices—such as European paganism and Asian shamanism—across different cultures. Yang is currently the subject of two institutional solo exhibitions—Haegue Yang: Several Reenactments at S.M.A.K. in Ghent (running through September 10, 2023), and Haegue Yang: Changing From From to From at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra (running through September 24, 2023). Upcoming events include a solo show at the Helsinki Art Museum, as well as an extensive survey show at the Hayward Gallery in London next year, which will later travel to major institutions in Europe.
The booth will also feature works by internationally acclaimed artists who are frequent subjects of major solo exhibitions across the globe. Works on view include Untitled (1973), a gouache drawing by Alexander Calder, one of the most influential 20th-century artists and recent subject of a celebrated solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery; Anish Kapoor, the Mumbai-born, London-based artist who installed his first-ever permanent installation in New York early this year at the base of the Herzog & de Meuron-designed 'Jenga Tower' at 56 Leonard Street, will be showing Glove (2013); Remembered Words—(Snake Eyes) (2012-2013), a drawing by the American contemporary artist Roni Horn, will also be featured. Horn has recently presented solo exhibitions at Centro Botín, Santander, Spain, and Winsing Art Place, Taipei, Taiwan. As one of Horn's drawing series created between 2012 and 2013, Remembered Words conceptually ties back to the artist's main body of work, therefore remaining significant to her oeuvre. Kukje Gallery will also present a sculptural work by the Berlin-based artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, titled On Target, Fig. 6 (2022). The prolific duo, who work across various genres including sculpture, performance, design, architecture, and theater, successfully weave a biting wit with poignant and often philosophical observations on society. Elmgreen & Dragset's current exhibitions include APMA, CHAPTER FOUR - FROM THE APMA COLLECTION (running through July 30, 2023) at the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul, which brings together Amorepacific's contemporary art collection; and Bonne Chance, a solo exhibition slated for June 10, 2023, at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France.
Concurrently at Kukje Gallery there is a solo exhibition of the noted British contemporary artist Julian Opie through July 2, 2023, at its outpost in Busan. Installed both in the gallery and in the adjacent Sukcheon Hall located in F1963, the exhibition (titled OP.VR@Kukje/F1963.BUSAN) showcases a comprehensive selection of new works by the artist, bringing together paintings, sculptures, mosaics, films, Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, and a live action performance.
Location
Messe Basel
Messeplatz 10
4058 Basel, Switzerland
Our show takes place at the Swiss exhibition site Messe Basel, featuring a hall designed by international architects Herzog & de Meuron of Basel.