Art Basel 16 – 22 June 2025. Discover the most striking installations at Art Basel 2025—from Katherina Grosse to Anika Yi, a journey through art and social critique. By Joas Nebe: Every year, Art Basel commissions an artist to design the fairground. This year, Katherina Grosse transformed the space and the facade of the exhibition building into a giant painting using her spray guns. In front of the facade, plastic sheets have been stretched, and the square has been laid with recyclable asphalt before the artwork was created. The white and magenta-colored sheets connect the building, the fountain in front of it, and the square, creating a sense of vibration. Hew Locke has a whole fleet of toy ships floating in the air at P.P.O.W. The lonely odyssey of the cunning warrior Odysseus and his few companions is transformed here into a flotilla of amusing toy ships hovering in the air. Fiona Banner plays with the different levels of human communication with “time, the anti-hero” at Frith Street Gallery. A mannequin arm is moved by a clockwork mechanism like the hands of a clock across a white wall, symbolizing the fleeting nature of time. Printed on the plastic limb is the word “Disarm,” which alludes both to the missing body parts and thus to transience, and also to the act of disarming. At the same time, the theme of transience, explored on two levels of meaning, is negated by the plastic arm itself, since a plastic limb cannot decay. Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, Time, the Anti-Hero, 2025 Peter Wüthrich presents at Galleria Christian Stein (Milan) a seemingly etymological collection of pierced butterflies in a glass frame. Upon closer inspection, the butterflies, made up of various colors and sizes, are composed of book covers. The accumulation of knowledge displaces nature. Knowledge is self-sufficient. Jordan Wolfson exhibits at Zwirner with “Untitled” the memento mori of a fatal traffic accident. In the lower half of the UV print, the overturned vehicle involved in the crash is visible. In the upper half, behind the multi-part mounted crosses, are the faces—not of the accident victims, but of dolls. Does the accident turn the dolls into zombies, making them threatening, or do the doll faces make the deadly event look like a child’s game? Anika Yi creates at Esther Schippers with “Misty Notions (2025),” made of synthetic fibers shaped like a jellyfish and glowing from within, the illusion of natural beauty that is completely artificial and thus fits perfectly into a post-apocalyptic world. Photo credit: courtesy of Art Basel, Joas Nebe Anicka Yi, Misty Notions, 2025, PMMA optical fiber, LEDs etc. Hew Locke, Odyssey, 2024