The sixth edition of artgenève opens later this week—running from 26 until 29 January–hosting 85 galleries from 16 different countries, with many public and private institutions taking part in the fair’s non-commercial programme and evening performances from the likes of Canadian artist Angela Bulloch.
As part of this year’s institutional programme, the Fondation Beyeler will celebrate its 20th anniversary. There will also be a 2000 sqm light installation of Anthony McCall’s Vertical Works as part of the fair’s The Estate Show section. Lake Léman will once again provide the setting for artgéneve/sculptures. This year for the first time, a new section will launch, artgenève/cinéma, presenting the Julia Stoschek Collection from Berlin and Düsseldorf.
Within the fair, the selection of previewed work is lively and vivid, with a strong body of works favouring beautiful chaos and others made up of architectural, clean lines and bold block colours.
A deliciously foul Chloe Wise work would be a good example of the former, with her 2016 sculpture A Fantastic Ignorance, in which a stark white, tiered plinth is loaded with nectarine forms (nice), dried onion (not so nice) and lashings of creamy topping (we can’t quite make up our minds). There are also turbulent paintings from the likes of Vidya Gastaldon with Art Bärtschi & Cie, and the simpler but no less intense Untitled from Robert Zandvliet at Galerie Jean Brolly. Despite the disorder, these works hold enormous aesthetic appeal, with luscious colour palettes and sumptuous forms—even considering some of the more off-putting elements.
Other works sit almost in opposition to these, favouring mechanically straight edges and cold materials such as fibreglass and steel. Galerie Catherine Issert, Roehrs & Boetsch and Galerie lange + pult are all showing such works, from Pascal Pinauld, Reinier Bosch Cosmos and Wolfram Ullrich respectively. Glass is also employed to a somewhat clinical effect, FABRICA’s A Container of Errors: Flaw (2016), also at Roehrs & Boetsch, displaying a satisfying flaw in its warped centre. Brigitte Kowanz’s WISH (2015) also explores the interior/exterior qualities of glass, with a mix of LED lights and mirror creating a city-like scene within a simple cube.
The mirroring of planes and forms carries across to wall-hung works. Bernard Voïta’s Melancholia VIII (Abdellah T.) (2014) is an inkjet print on paper which depicts an interior space in black and white, chopped up at various angles with shadow and splits in the image itself. This creates a fine balance between chaos and order, slipping fully into neither and remaining out of reach of an easy piecing back together. Cécile Krähenbühl’s K-way (2016) employs a similar technique, though pushes further into chaos, with slices of finger and moments of both realism and abstraction blended into a single image.
In all, artgenève promises a diverse and visually-pleasing selection of work, which swings from mechanical to mind-bending.
‘artgenève‘ runs from 26-29 January at Palexpo
