An event took place on July 14, 2005, 6 :00 PM at the Geneva Art School (HEAD). A wallpainting of the logotype «Art Basel Geneva» on the pink walls was the only visual display. Champagne and petit fours were served and the crowd was surrounded by fog.
Inspired by Art Basel, the most prestigious art fair both in Switzerland and abroad (along with its twincounterpart Art Basel Miami Beach, USA), the first edition of Art Basel Geneva took place in Geneva in June 2005, simultaneously with the famous art fair in Basel. Using the official Art Basel corporate identity, the artists produced a wallpainting of the Art Basel Geneva logotype (the only work on display) and turned the exibition hall into a foggy environment full of artificially produced smoke. The information about the event was submitted to all the Art Basel member-galleries, invited to attend the opening.
The idea about the project emerged as a reaction towards the Institution of Art Fairs and their continuous worldwide expansion. The project focuses on intersections between financial and institutional extensions, the «prosthetic» character of global art production, and relations inherent to the business environment of contemporary art worlds where art, money, and power are brought together. With an intention to reflect the current situation behind such a relationship, while creating an art event pertaining to the logic of new market economy and its rules, Art Basel Geneva converts a business event into a social spectacle, where the glamourous atmoshere, dilemmas and paradoxes of a cloudy art world are faced by a single message on the wall, a comment and modest inversion of meaning.
July 14, 2005, rue Général Dufour 2, Geneva
(HEAD haute école d’art et design)
