The fair Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, features a popular section that’s accessible to everyone: Parcours, which returns for its tenth edition with an exhibition that boasts 20 site-specific public art projects presented in and around Münsterplatz (Cathedral Square). On view from June 10 and running through the end of the fair on June 16, “The Impossibility of Being a Sculpture” has been curated by Samuel Leuenberger, the founder of the Swiss nonprofit exhibition space SALTS.
“In the civic domain, sculpture is much more than its concept: It is an active participant and a mischievous one at that,” declared Leuenberger in his curatorial statement. Ranging from Camille Henrot’s abstracted figurative forms that tackle obsessive-compulsive personality disorder to Hassan Sharif’s jumbles of copper wires that strangely form a figure, we’ve selected artworks that are certain to make the most committed flaneur, or urban ambler, stop dead in their tracks.
8. Hassan Sharif’s Copper No. 32 at Erasmushaus
One of the most celebrated contemporary artists in the Middle East, Hassan Sharif was a master of many styles and mediums. An Iranian-born artist who passed away in 2016 after living and working in Dubai, he brought a unique point of view to his performances, conceptual art practice, and self-taught handiwork. Using all types of found materials, Sharif made accumulative pieces that reference the repetition of objects put into effect by the Nouveaux Realists and the Arte Povera strategy of employing everyday objects to simple ends. Copper No. 32, which is cleverly being presented at Erasmushaus, an antiquarian bookshop in central Basel, depicts a cocoon-like construction of interwoven copper wire that oddly looks like it’s hiding a body. Obsessive in nature, the wildly woven elements give the impression that they could one day light up, blaze out, and let an inner spirit depart its physical form.
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