Basel Social Club Is a Beautiful Mess—and That’s the Point

A universe away from the glitz and shine of the Messeplatz, the gritty and great Basel Social Club (BSC) has once again outmaneuvered the fair fatigue of Art Basel. It’s chaotic—and that’s not a bad thing. For its fourth edition, the rogue nonprofit exhibition platform has taken over a defunct private bank in Grossbasel, across the Rhine from Art Basel and around the corner from the Kunstmuseum. Here, more than 100 rooms have been reimagined as one living, breathing artwork. From blood banks to beauty salons, the former vaults now trade in irony and intimacy, blurring the line between luxury and necessity. What began as a one-off sideshow to the main fair is now Basel’s most vital counter-program. That it is free-entry (Art Basel charges a 69 CHF (around $70) admission fee for non-VIPs)—and unpredictable—makes it very much alive.

One thing that Basel Social Club shares with Art Basel is that they are both overwhelming. But this year’s BSC has gone the extra mile. The whole thing is very punk, and even at the main fair, where blue-chip works by Rothko, Picasso, and Baselitz are on offer, there are once again whispers that Basel Social Club is a must-see. There is art in every corner and every alcove. Sometimes, you have to walk over it, as is the case with a performance piece in which a dour-faced woman pushes a circa-1970s vacuum over carpets and rugs in every which room as she live streams from a phone perched on a selfie stick.

Three presentations are emblematic of the spirit of BSC. A joint effort by Harlesden High Street and Kendra Jayne Patrick, It’s a Whole Lotta Money (in this muf**er), is a fully functional Black hair salon redolent with the scent of shea butter; it highlights how spaces like these act as political forum, style hub, and cultural archive within various Black communities. Its juxtaposition with the buttoned-up architecture of Swiss discretion and generational wealth is striking.

The artists included in Its’s a Whole Lotta Money deliver on the concept with wit and texture. Daniel Jasper’s hand-painted Ghanaian cinema posters face a smug 1978 Volksbank ad. Nearby, Africanus Okokon riffs on hairstyle posters with ghostly overlays of tribal scarification, while André Magaña offers a 3D-printed knockoff of a gold Cartier bracelet. Faisal Abdu’Allah anchors it all with his Barbershop: Live Salon performance where he is giving real haircuts and real talk in a vintage Swiss barber chair. While I was there a woman in her 80s was getting a trim while a younger man waited in line.

Another highlight is 1 ★ Review Tour by artists Guillaume Bijl and Hanne Lippard, presented by Brussels-based gallery Super Dakota. It takes cheeky aim at the tyranny of online star-based review systems that increasingly dictate what’s worth seeing, eating, buying, or avoiding. Framed as a video essay, the work is viewed through either the headrest of a shiatsu massage chair or while sitting in a standard mechanical massage chair, inviting the viewer to relax while hearing about how “Building 1 of the Roche Tower in Basel is definitely the ugliest building in all of Switzerland.” At its best, 1 ★ Review Tour explores how platforms like Google and Yelp reduce complex places into numerical consensus, filtering the world through algorithmic value judgments that favor the measurable over the meaningful.

For its participation, Zurich-based gallery suns.works has chosen to make the most of the former bank by cracking open the vault—literally. Located in the building’s basement, Bijoux Solaires transforms this room made for hoarding and hiding away wealth into a glittering jewelry boutique where everything is for sale. Themed around the summer solstice, the offerings here come from seasoned jewelers as well as artists experimenting with adornment as medium. Among the antiques are jewelry once owned by Meret Oppenheim and Andy Warhol. The rings by artist Johanna Dahm are not to be missed. Each is made of one 20-gram gold bar from the former banking juggernaut Credit Suisse, expertly hollowed out with one round fired from a machine gun.

Basel Social Club isn’t the only alternative in Basel this week. Just a short walk from the Messeplatz is the June Art Fair, in a Herzog & de Meuron–renovated concrete bunker with a sharp, gallery-led program that’s as anti-spectacle as Basel gets. Founded in 2019 as a quieter counterpoint to the big fairs, June brings together an intergenerational roster of artists and dealers in a setting that favors conversation over commerce. The adjacent Landhof Community Garden adds a welcome dose of calm, making June a necessary breather—and one of the week’s most thoughtfully staged exhibitions.

This year, Clearing, which has gallery outposts in New York and Los Angeles, has decided to skip Art Basel and Liste altogether and opt for something more domestic with Maison Clearing, a sprawling takeover of a house at Bannwartweg 39, about 10 minutes from the Messeplatz. With works spread across interior rooms and a 10,000-square-foot garden, the gallery is staging its own satellite universe. Screenings in the attic, dinners on the lawn, and, like BSC, free admission make this one of the week’s smartest detours. Curated by Clearing’s newly appointed director of programming Olamiju Fajemisin, the project features more than 40 artists, including Sebastian Black, Violet Dennison, Tobias Kaspar, and Zak Kitnick. 

Basel has no shortage of offerings this week, from the main fair to the exhibitions at its top-tier institutions. But it’s the alternative venues, Basel Social Club in particular, that make the week all that livelier.