BASEL.- The 47th edition of Art Basel in Basel closed on Sunday, June 19, 2016 amid reports of significant sales across all levels of the market, including many major sales by galleries exhibiting within the Unlimited sector. Attendance from international collectors and institutions was once again very strong, with new collectors from countries across Africa and the former Soviet Union, as well as Iran, Lebanon, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand, coming to the fair for the first time. In a more volatile market and political environment, this edition proved that there continues to be a strong demand for high-quality works when premier international galleries and leading collectors from across the world come together. This year’s edition received widespread praise for its strong booth presentations and for the powerful artistic positions, many poignantly responding to the current socio-political situation within Europe and further afield.

The show, whose Lead Partner is UBS, brought together 286 premier galleries from 33 countries, presenting the very best contemporary and historical material by around 4,000 artists. This year saw a strong list of galleries participating in the show for the first time, including: Johan Berggren Gallery (Malmö), Carroll / Fletcher (London), Grimm (Amsterdam), Maisterravalbuena (Madrid), Sprovieri (London), Galeria Stereo (Warsaw) and Waldburger Wouters (Brussels) from Europe; Bergamin & Gomide (Săo Paulo), Corbett vs. Dempsey (Chicago), Derek Eller Gallery (New York), Foxy Production (New York), Moran Bondaroff (Los Angeles), Pace/MacGill Gallery (New York), Simone Subal Gallery (New York), ULAE (Bay Shore) and Van Doren Waxter (New York) from the Americas; and Selma Feriani Gallery (Sidi Bou Said) from Africa.

Art Basel 2016 attracted an attendance of 95,000 across the six show days. Demonstrating its position as the central meeting point for the international artworld, artists in attendance at this year’s Art Basel show included: Davide Balula, Hans Op de Beeck, AA Bronson, Tracey Emin, Zhang Enli, Zeng Fanzhi, Cao Fei, Alfredo Jaar, Christian Jankowski, Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Michael Landy, Jonathan Monk, Oscar Murillo, Pope.L, Robin Rhode, James Turrell, Haegue Yang, Ding Yi and Samson Young.

Leading private collectors from Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa attended this year, as well as representatives from over 300 distinguished museums and institutions, including: The Art Institute of Chicago; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Serpentine Galleries, London; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; and The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing.

During the show, Art Basel announced that it will be partnering with UBS to commission a comprehensive new annual art market report. The new ‘Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report’ will be an objective and independent study authored by Dr. Clare McAndrew and her Dublin-based research and consulting firm Arts Economics. Covering the main macro-economic trends and delivering fundamental data on the art market as a whole, the first ‘Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report’ will be published in March 2017 to coincide with Art Basel's Hong Kong show. The announcement of this new report came alongside Art Basel's extension of its 22-year partnership with UBS, Art Basel's global Lead Partner.

Galleries exhibiting within all sectors of Art Basel were delighted to express their enthusiasm about this year’s show:

‘This has been a very successful fair for us, and we were impressed with the number of high quality international collectors who attended this year. We sold work by George Condo, Andreas Gursky, Jenny Holzer, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman, Frank Stella and Rosemarie Trockel, placing works with prominent collections across Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States and Asia.’ Philomene Magers, Co-owner, Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London, Los Angeles

‘An extraordinary fair; where desperation was replaced by inspiration. Yes, we had many sales, more than 80% of the work we brought, but more importantly, these were sales we felt proud of...to passionate collectors, both old and new.’ Marc Glimcher, President, Pace, New York, London, Beijing, Hong Kong

Galleries
This year the Galleries sector was particularly strong, with 220 of the world’s leading established galleries presenting the highest quality of painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, photography, video and editioned works. Six galleries exhibited in the sector for the first time having previously shown in Statements or Feature: Applicat-Prazan (Paris), Borzo (Amsterdam), Karma International (Zurich, Beverly Hills), Jack Shainman Gallery (New York, Kinderhook), Stevenson (Cape Town, Johannesburg) and Barbara Wien (Berlin). Pace/MacGill Gallery (New York) exhibited for the first time at the Basel fair. Highlights included: Metro Pictures’ (New York) pairing of Cindy Sherman and Camille Henrot; a solo presentation of Pia Camil by OMR (Mexico City); a pairing of Kansuke Yamamoto and Hanako Murakami at Taka Ishii Gallery (Tokyo, Paris, New York); Robin Rhode’s one day in-situ memorial wall drawing honoring the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising in South Africa, on display at Stevenson (Cape Town, Johannesburg); a comprehensive study of the origins of expressionism at Galerie St. Etienne (New York); Salvatore Scarpitta’s solo presentation by Tornabuoni (Paris, Florence, Milan Forte dei Marmi, Crans-Montana, London); and an elegantly curated stand featuring a large-scale Wolfgang Tillmans work by Maureen Paley (London).

Statements
The solo presentations in Statements offered visitors and collectors the opportunity to discover quality work by emerging artists, brought to Art Basel by 18 of the most exciting young international galleries – seven of whom were exhibiting at the fair for their first time. The sector included work by artists from Algeria, Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Georgia, Germany, Peru, Poland, the United States and Venezuela. Highlights included: Sol Calero at Laura Bartlett Gallery (London); Lionel Maunz at Bureau (New York); Helen Johnson at Mary Mary (Glasgow); Jasper Spicero at Johan Berggren Gallery (Malmö); Ajay Kurian at 47 Canal (New York); Timur Si-Qin at Société (Berlin); Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme at Carroll / Fletcher (London); Ketuta AlexiMeskhishvili at Micky Schubert (Berlin); and a presentation of work by Massinissa Selmani at Selma Feriani Gallery (Sidi Bou Said).

The Baloise Art Prize was awarded to Canadian artist Sara Cwynar, presented by Foxy Production (New York) and Mary Reid Kelley from the United States, exhibited by Arratia Beer (Berlin). The prize of CHF 30,000 was presented to the two artists by a jury of international experts, and works by the award winners were acquired by The Baloise Group and donated to the MMK, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main and the MUDAM, Luxembourg.

Feature
This year’s expanded Feature sector saw 32 galleries from 12 countries present precise curatorial projects. Highlights from the Feature sector, which encompassed both historical and contemporary work, included: a restaging of Jannis Kounellis’ seminal painting and performance piece with a violinist and an un-choreographed ballerina, presented by Luxembourg & Dayan (New York, London); a presentation by James Cohan Gallery (New York) of rare Pop works by Robert Smithson; Lynn Hershman Leeson’s groundbreaking ‘The Roberta Breitmore Series’ at Waldburger Wouters (Brussels); a presentation by Wentrup (Berlin) of Olaf Metzel’s immersive installation exploring the emotions of refugees; a selection of Kurt Schwitters works at Galerie Zlotowski (Paris); and a career survey of works on paper by Richard Diebenkorn, presented by Van Doren Waxter (New York).

Unlimited
Providing galleries with a unique platform to show works that transcend the traditional art fair stand, Unlimited, curated for the fifth consecutive year by Gianni Jetzer, saw a record number of 88 ambitious historical and contemporary works, with galleries reporting excellent sales. An annual highlight of Art Basel, many visitors commented on the strength of this year's presentation, featuring renowned international artists including Ai Weiwei, El Anatsui, Kader Attia, Hans Op de Beeck, Gretchen Bender, Pablo Bronstein, Elmgreen & Dragset, Tracey Emin, Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Mike Kelley, William Kentridge, Joseph Kosuth, Louise Lawler, Sol LeWitt, Laura Lima, Paul McCarthy, Pamela Rosenkranz, Martha Rosler, Dieter Roth, Frank Stella and Samson Young.

Parcours
The Parcours program once again wove artistic interventions into the fabric of Basel. Curated for the first time by Samuel Leuenberger, Director and Curator of SALTS in Birsfelden, Switzerland, this year’s program presented artistic projects with a ‘human’ or ‘figurative’ stance across the Münsterplatz area of Basel. Parcours featured 19 sitespecific artworks by internationally renowned and emerging artists including: Trisha Baga, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Andrew Dadson, Michael Dean, Jim Dine, Sam Durant, Alberto Garutti, Alfredo Jaar, Hans Josephsohn, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Eva Koťátková, Allan McCollum, Iván Navarro, Virginia Overton, Tabor Robak, Tracey Rose, Bernar Venet, Michael Wang and Lawrence Weiner. Over the seven days, nearly 8,000 people attended Parcours.

On Parcours Night on Saturday, June 18, all project venues stayed open late with special one-off performances by: Eva Kot’átková at Basler Marionetten Theater; Mathilde Rosier, presented in collaboration with Institut Kunst, HGK FHNW at Scala Basel; Nástio Mosquito, presented in collaboration with Raw Material Company, Dakar, at Gymnasium am Münsterplatz; Tracey Rose at Münsterplatz; Anne Imhof, presented in collaboration with Kunsthalle Basel; and Pádraic E. Moore, presented in collaboration with Raw Material Company, Dakar, at Museum der Kulturen Basel.

With its inherently collaborative approach, Parcours flourished thanks to the support and engagement of the city of Basel, its institutions and inhabitants. This year saw the start of a new venture, Parcours Bar at Spira Popstore, a space where each night from Monday to Saturday six Basel based institutions – deuxpiece, Schwarzwaldallee, Deli Projects, SALTS, Ausstellungsraum Klingental and Oslo10 – presented their program.

Film The Cairo-based film curator and lecturer Maxa Zoller selected Art Basel’s Film program for the second time. Consisting of 19 screenings, the films were shown at Stadtkino Basel over six nights. Highlights from this year’s program included: Pierre Bismuth’s ‘Where is Rocky ll?’; Fiona Tan’s feature-length fiction film debut ‘History’s Future’; and 'Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania' by Jonas Mekas. As part of the program, Marian Masone presented ‘Burden’, a documentary by Timothy Marrinan and Richard Dewey about the artist Chris Burden’s life and work. In partnership with Art Basel, the Festival del film Locarno presented the Swiss premiere of ‘Continuity’, Omer Fast’s most recent feature-length film. The short film program included works by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Yuri Ancarani, Manon de Boer, Tim Davis, Edith Dekyndt, Simon Fujiwara, Beatrice Gibson, Sven Johne, Park Chan-kyong, Martha Rosler, Anri Sala, Cally Spooner and Superflex.

Conversations and Salon
Art Basel’s Conversations and Salon series once again brought together leading artists, gallerists, art historians, curators, museum directors, critics and collectors from across the global artworld. This year’s program included 27 talks and saw the launch of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s new series Artists’ Artists, where emerging artists were in conversation with artists that had inspired them. The program this year focused on key art historical moments and had a strong political overtone, with topics explored including the COBRA group, 100 years of Dada, museum’s responses to immigration, race and justice. Speakers included: Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Angel Abreu, Josh Baer, Davide Balula, Sam Durant, Róza El-Hassan, Alfredo Jaar, Alison Knowles, Jonas Mekas, Adrian Notz, Adrian Paci, Tracey Rose, Tobias Rehberger, Tim Rollins, Rayyane Tabet, Not Vital and Valentin Carron. This year’s premier artist talk saw AA Bronson in conversation with Alfredo Jaar, moderated by Mark Rappolt, Editor-in-Chief of ArtReview. The Art Basel talks program was free and open to the public. Almost 2,000 people attended Conversations and Salon this year.

Zome Alloy
A new structure by Los Angeles-based artist Oscar Tuazon was installed on Messeplatz for the duration of this year’s Art Basel. An adaptation of Steve Baer's ‘Zome House’ (1972), Tuazon’s project hosted the second edition of Baer's 'Alloy Conference', first held in 1969.

In addition to the Alloy Conference, Zome Alloy accommodated projects such as ‘Green Light’, an artistic workshop conceived by Olafur Eliasson, and ‘A Kind of Jazz’, a participatory exhibition by the Masterstudio of the Institute of Integrative Design at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel.