Kukje Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel 2024 at Messe Basel from 13 to 16 Juen 2024. The 2024 edition of Art Basel in Basel will feature 285 of the world's leading galleries from 40 countries, showcasing works across all media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and digital artworks by modern, contemporary, and emerging artists. The fair will introduce different sectors including Galleries, featuring 243 of the world's leading galleries; Unlimited, a sector curated by Giovanni Carmine, Director of Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, presenting 70 large-scale installations; and Parcours, showcasing more than 20 site-specific public works around the city of Basel, and curated for the first time by Stefanie Hessler, Director of the Swiss Institute (SI) in New York. Maike Cruse, the new Director of Art Basel in Basel has said: 'I am looking forward to welcoming the global art community to Basel come June for the upcoming edition of our show. With the addition of 22 new participants, it promises to be exceptionally dynamic and filled with exciting discoveries. I am thrilled about the expansion of the city-wide program, which now includes the public art sector Parcours on Clarastrasse newly curated by Stefanie Hessler. Additionally, I eagerly anticipate our project at Hotel Merian, which will contribute to the continued growth of Art Basel's presence in the city through a fresh approach.'
Kukje Gallery looks forward to presenting a comprehensive selection of works by both Korean and international artists. Park Seo-Bo's late-Écriture series, Écriture (描法) No. 110211 (2011), displaying a striking pink hue rooted in the colors of nature, will be displayed together with Ha Chong-Hyun's recent painting, Conjunction 23-61 (2023), which emanates a powerful formal rigor with its thick white matière and use of the unique technique of bae-ap-bub. **Kim Yun Shin **will be presenting her painted wood sculpture, Add One Add Two, Divide One Divide Two 2020-1 (2020), recalling her current participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, where she is exhibiting 8 wood sculptures that represent her long-standing practice. Due to limited access to materials during the global pandemic, Kim recently began focusing on the production of 'painted sculptures,' comprising collaged, fragmented, and recycled wood covered with acrylic paint, illustrating another type of 'Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One' based on an integration and division of the two mediums of painting and sculpture.
Major pieces by three of Korea's most celebrated female contemporary artists will also be shown at the booth. A result of an 'impossible' collaboration between the South-Korean artist Kyungah Ham and anonymous North Korean artisans, the hand-embroidered painting titled What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities SSK 06-03 (2018–2019) encapsulates the labor of those invisible, and the countless conditions that thoroughly remain out of the artist's control. Haegue Yang's The Randing Intermediate – Moka Spider (2024), a new handwoven sculpture belonging to_The Randing Intermediates_—a rattan sculpture series produced in collaboration with local craftsmen in Manila—encompasses the language of rattan and straw craft. The work embodies its title, demonstrating a fusion of the structure of a moka pot (a stove-top coffee maker) with that of a spider; the resulting form gives Yang's work a hybrid quality, hinting at the artist's persistent research into contrasting ideas, such as the living organisms and machines, or inanimate objects and humans. Yang, who works in both Seoul and Berlin and recently sold out her Mesmerizing Mesh series on the VIP Preview day of Frieze New York 2024, has a number of projects planned for the latter half of this year, including two projects in Naoshima, Japan, each at the Benesse House Museum and Matabe exhibition space (opening on 15 and 21 June 2024, respectively); Flat Works 2004–2024 (opening on 19 September 2024) at the Arts Club of Chicago; and a major survey exhibition titled _Leap Year _at the Hayward Gallery in London (opening on 8 October 2024). Meanwhile, Suki Seokyeong Kang, who recently held her first solo exhibition at the gallery's K3 space in March, presents Jeong — step #10 (2023–2024). Deeply rooted in the idea of Jeong (井, a Chinese character for a well), a central concept for the artist, the work derives from the square seen at its center. The circular wooden frame that symbolizes a 'step,' and the layers of colored silk encompassing the passage of time, come together to demonstrate the conceptual and formal potential of the work.
Meanwhile, the booth will also feature Sungsic Moon's break time (2011), a painting that depicts a strange yet beautiful landscape of ordinary trees and surrounding flora that have been artificially gardened, in a detailed and meticulous technique that defines the artist. Moon is acclaimed for his unique sensitivity towards daily surroundings, and his way of transferring them onto the canvas.
The booth will also feature works by internationally acclaimed artists, starting with INTRODUCTION TO INTERDICTION (2024), belonging to the Redaction Painting series by Jenny Holzer. Using oil and precious metal leaf on linen, the artist translates U.S. government documents released through the Freedom of Information Act into paintings. Holzer, who is currently the subject of a major solo exhibition titled Jenny Holzer: Light Line at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was also recently named one of Time Magazine's '100 Most Influential People of 2024.' Also on view will be Anish Kapoor's After (2022), a gouache drawing infused with visual chaos and raw, visceral energy. Kapoor is currently celebrating a blockbuster solo exhibition in Europe, ANISH KAPOOR UNSEEN, at the ARKEN Museum of Art in Denmark. Another work on view will be Roni Horn's El Greco changes here (1993), which alludes to the enlightenment the artist personally experienced in Iceland, a destination she has spent over three decades (since 1975, when the artist was 19 years old) visiting. Throughout these routine visits, Horn voluntarily situated herself in the midst of the brutal, merciless Icelandic landscape, seeking for a time of self-sufficiency and solitude. Island Zombie: Iceland Writings (2020)—a compilation of the artist's writings completed in Iceland—includes a text with the phrase 'El Greco changes here,' referencing an artist who is, according to Horn, one of her 'cultural companions.' The Swiss artist, Ugo Rondinone, who is presenting his solo exhibition BURN TO SHINE at Museum SAN in Wonju, Korea, will present vierterjanuarzweitausendundvierundzwanzig (2024), a stunning recent addition to his renowned sun series. The painting, which metaphorically conveys the radiant and hypnotic lights of nature through the forms of blurred, multi-colored concentric circles, is not restrained to a conventional palette, employing a variety of green, pink, and black hues to investigate the potential of painting and celebrate life. The Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX's As Close As We Get (2024), a new work from an eponymous series, alludes to the marine environment, framing the interconnectedness of human materials and design with the more natural forms of other organisms, as well as the reimagining, restoration, and revitalization of urban ecosystems. On June 4, 2024, Kukje Gallery will open the collective's solo exhibition Fish & Chips across its K1 and K3 spaces, featuring a variety of paintings, sculptures, and films.
Meanwhile at Kukje Gallery, the internationally celebrated German artist Candida Höfer is holding her solo exhibition, RENASCENCE (on view through 28 July 2024), across the first and second floors of the K2 space. This exhibition features 14 works selected from her latest series documenting historic buildings that underwent renovations during the pandemic, as well as previously photographed sites the artist has revisited. Also on view through 30 June 2024, at Kukje Gallery Busan, is Na Kim's solo exhibition titled Easy Heavy. Marking the artist's first-ever solo presentation with the gallery, the exhibition features nearly 40 works, which explore the expressive potential and utility of graphic design elements.
Unlimited Opening (by invitation only)
Monday 10 June 2024
VIP Days (by invitation only)
Tuesday 11 June 2024
Vernissage (access with a Vernissage ticket or by invitation)
Wednesday 12 June 2024, 5pm to 8pm
Public Days (access with a ticket or a VIP Card)
Thursday 13 June 2024, 11am to 7pm
Friday 14 June 2024, 11am to 7pm
Saturday 15 June 2024, 11am to 7pm
Sunday 16 June 2024, 11am to 7pm
Messe Basel
Messeplatz 10 4058 Basel
Switzerland