BASEL.- The open area in front of the building housing the International Art Show becomes a platform for art projects in a public space. Ten projects by internationally known artists will be displayed here during the International Art Show. They are also available for sale. In creating Public Art Projects, Art Basel offers a multimedia platform to artists seeking an alternative to the White Cube of the exhibition hall. The works exhibited on the square will make direct contact with unbiased observers; engaging with the daily lives of passers-by in a way that may be poetic, alienating or surprising. Public Art Projects is not a traditional sculpture exhibition, but facilitates encounters in an urban environment.

Public Art Projects gives a thrilling insight into the way in which leading contemporary artists interpret new art in a public space. Most of the works on show have been specially created for Art Basel or are being installed to suit their specific location.
Experienced Basel curator Martin Schwander is responsible for the concept underlying this part of the show.

«Colmar» is the name given by Manfred Pernice (Galerie Neu, Berlin/Anton Kern Gallery, New York) to the fountain which he has designed with Public Art Projects in mind. This 270 cm-high water feature consists of individual cast parts into which tiles have been inserted, or which serve as a foundation for objets trouvés or for written messages. Pernice's fountain has its own water circulation. Here, the artist is deliberately playing with the classic theme of a fountain in a public space.

Here in Basel, Allan Kaprow (Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, London), the grand master of the happening, is showing his fascinatingly ephemeral intervention «Fluids». This is a square, roofless construction (240x300x900 cm) to be built by art students out of blocks of ice. The resulting structure will melt - at a faster or slower rate, depending on the weather – and ultimately dissolve into nothing. In his works, Allan Kaprow largely dispenses with the materialization, or «immortalization», of an artistic product. There is no need for a work of art to be a possession or a treasure to be guarded: just as culture is not something that one possesses. The happening «Fluids», which was first seen in 1967 at 15 locations in the region of Los Angeles, lives up to this claim.

The work by English artist Jonathan Monk (Meyer Riegger Galerie, Karlsruhe) is really intended as a message to extraterrestrials. Using a laser, the artist projects the phrase TO INFINITY AND BEYOND in blue lettering into the sky. Since the words are projected into the blue sky, there is no projection surface and the work remains invisible, unless the sky should be cloudy and gray. The work can thus only be experienced through the lettering. One work that can only be heard is that by Trisha Donnelly (Air de Paris, Paris); a sound installation erected by the entrance to the «Art Unlimited» hall.

The work «Bateau de Larmes» by French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel (Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris) can be seen as homage to the desire for freedom felt by the peoples of the world. A four meter-long boat floats on the large pool in Exhibition Square. Studded with colorful Murano glass beads, its superstructure resembles a crown. The boat, worthy of any fairy tale, was hand-built by Cuban Boat People and symbolizes their suffering, as well as their hopes of reaching their Promised Land, the USA. At the same time, it is a general allegory for the sufferings and rebellious nature of oppressed peoples.

Public things become private and nevertheless remain public: this is the motto of the work by Tasro Niscino of Japan (Galerie Michael Janssen, Cologne, Luis Campaña, Cologne). A temporary room with wooden walls and a wooden roof will be erected high up around the lights of a lamp-post on Exhibition Square. The room resembles a normal living room, with wallpaper, laminated floor, windows, lamps, furniture, etc. The public street light will look like a table lamp as it stands on a specially built table. The public street light will become the private lighting for a room which, in turn, is nonetheless open to the public.

Last year at Art Unlimited, Atelier van Lieshout (Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna) showed the highly regarded, vagina-shaped bedroom «Wombhouse». In Public Art Projects, the Dutch gal-lery is presenting «Bar Rectum», which has been specially created for Art Basel. A fully-functional bar set up inside an outsize plastic intestine will serve refreshments to visitors.

In their hothouse created out of a modified container, the two Swiss artists Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger (Stampa, Basel) explore the behavior of invader plants. These are traveling plants which succeed in establishing themselves in new territories. Because they interfere with our domestic flora, they are a thorn in the flesh of biologists. The hothouse by Steiner/ Lenzlinger contains plants of every kind (invader plants, vege-tables, flowers, weeds, house plants, herbs, creepers of all kinds, artificial plants, dying grasses, growing fertilizer crystals, etc.). The artists consider what strategies the plants would develop, given the same requirements for earth, light, water and loving care, and if they would supplant each other in such a confined space.

The Brazilian artist Tunga (Luhring Augustine, New York) presents a very special set of chessmen to the international visitors at Art Basel: teeth made out of plastic, each the size of a human being and suspended from a metal pole. Visitors will be able to use these figures for their own game of chess on the board already marked out in front of the Art Unlimited hall.

Over 70 other outsize works (murals, video projections, sculptures, installations, photo series, performances and digital art) can be seen and purchased in the «Art Unlimited» hall.