Liste: The Young Art Show

Liste

Liste is a satellite show to Art Basel that is described as The Young Art Fair. There were a number of satellite shows that ran concurrent to Art Basel such as Design Miami/Basel, Scope Basel, Selection Art Fair, The Solo Project, Verge Basel and Volta7. In 5 days it is impossible to see all of these fairs and for me, a person with no sense of direction and no access to internet for directions, impossible to find. So Liste it was! According to the website: “Every year since its opening in 1996, the LISTE - the Young Art Fair in Basel has presented new and important galleries and highly contemporary young art. The LISTE's concept of introducing galleries in general no more than 5 years old and artists under 40 has been at the heart of its being one of the most important fairs for young art and still being considered one of the art world’s most important discoverer fair.”

The venue for this event is a four story labyrinth that used to be a factory of some sort. What I saw was a lot of projects by people with great ideas and limited resources. The gallery owners were generally less friendly and over all I wasn’t very impressed. Probably because I just came from a very overwhelming example of fine art.

Some things that I noted are:

Anyone willing to climb the 120 stairs to view the “Piep Show” on the roof was awarded with some amazing views and a beer.

Sascha Brauning’s paintings at Foxy Productions in NYC have a very oily, tactile quality. The paintings are fantastical but have the quality of being painted from life at the same time. She constructs sculptures and makes the paintings from them.

Josse Bailly was represented by Kunstpreis der Nationale Suisse. It’s interesting to see work that to me seems like something an old punk would make in his basement while swilling PBR and listening to Slayer. The Swiss love it!

Anders Clausen does large scale prints of screen shots. This one was smudged while the ink was wet to put a bit of the artist’s hand in an artform that is completely reliant on technology. What has become banal to our existence is now being exemplified like Warhol’s soup cans.

David Jablonowski carved this wooden keyboard in a well crafted bit of irony.

Stelios Faitakis of Greece, made enormous paintings in a traditional Byzantine style. The series was called Welcome to the Future and featured a post-apocalyptical array of rats, newspapers, drinks and shopping girls.

A featured artist who was given a large space in a print studio within the building was the Venezuelan artist, Elias Crespin. There were a number of kinetic sculptures- in fact it was pretty common. His electro-kinetic sculptures changed form so slowly it was entrancing. He is part of a growing movement that uses technology as a means of expression. In fact, he didn’t study art at all but rather has a degree in computer science.

Another one that I saw but didn’t get a video of was:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwlCS6xLBQs