Joan Semmel’s "Skin in the Game" (2019).
It’s not exactly a secret that super-size artworks have proliferated in recent decades, and especially in the last few years, but nothing drives home the point quite as dramatically as a visit to Unlimited, the Art Basel fair’s section for pieces that do not fit in fair booths—or even most galleries. Soon, some of the works in the section will no doubt find their way to exhibition halls that once were industrial warehouses or power stations, or were designed from the start with bigness in mind. For now, they are here in Basel, through Sunday.
However, it’s important to say that not everything in Unlimited is gargantuan. It is also a place for what amounts to focused, full-on gallery exhibitions—like a sprawling array of great material dating from 1971 to 1974 by the shape-shifting feminist Martha Wilson and a full collection of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s 1987–92 puzzle works—plus video works that require a nice, large, dark room to enjoy to their fullest—like Jacolby Satterwhite’s latest stunner, Birds in Paradise (2019), or the Bruce Conner classic REPORT (1963–67).
Below, a look at some of what is on view in Unlimited, through numbers.
24: The width, in feet, of Joan Semmel’s 2019 painting Skin in the Game (a good name for a work at an art fair). The riotously colored four-panel work presents five nude self-portraits from various angles.
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