Art Basel 2018 seemed bigger with satellite events popping up daily in Basel, Switzerland.

And there were many new events to be seen, including Photo Basel, Paper Position, the Frame Art Fair, the Rhy Art Fair, the Outsider Art Fair, and I Never Read, Art Book Fair.

During the fair, extraordinary galleries tried to outdo each other with caviar, bubbles, and sublime works of creativity and skill.

Meanwhile, illustrious museums in Basel put on their best shows for the year, from Bruce Nauman at Schaulager, to Giacometti/Bacon at Beyeler, to Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger at Tinguely.

Other institutional stand-outs? The Kunstmuseum, Kunsthalle, Kunstraum, Alsace’s CRAC, France’s Fondation Fernet-Branca, and 40 years of collecting by Geneva’s David Brolliet.

Overall, the spectacle of Basel didn’t disappoint.

Here, collectors arrived in private jets; curators from Red Bull and Pushkin looked to fill in new initiatives; power brokers gathered at the Trois Rois Hotel bar; and aficionados rushed from the “Conversations to Film” program to the Parcours displays around the city.

Below are some of the pieces that captivated the crowd at Basel 2018.

Carlos Cruz-Diez, “Translucent Chromointerferent Environment,” 1974/2009, installation, mixed media, 375 x 1186 x 1187 cm. Courtesy of Galeria Raquel Arnold.

[NOTE: Carlos Cruz-Diez — who was 95-years-old in 2018 — stole the show with his geometric elliptical light box at Art Unlimited. The exclusive UBS lounge also featured his works in their collection.]

Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, two British artists known as Semiconductor, came up “HALO,” a piece of dynamic “data artwork,” after participating in an artist residency program at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). Words and images courtesy of Monica Bello, head of Arts at CERN, curator of the 2018 Audemars Piguet Art Commission; Audemars Piguet; and the 2018 Audemars Piguet Art Commission.

Calvin Klein’s Raf Simons celebrated American quilt patchwork with these unique chairs — all sold out the first day at Design Miami.

As mentioned above, South African designer-activist Porky Hefer created several endangered animal pieces — including this Great White Shark — for the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation through the SFA Advisory and Southern Guild. Communities in Africa produced the works – with the sale proceeds benefitting the foundation.

IMAGES

All photographs by Alice Lonfat-Chu.