Art Basel Unlimited, Booth U49

Messe Basel, Messeplatz 10
4058 Basel, Switzerland

VIP Opening: June 11 – 12, 2024
Public dates: June 13 – 16, 2024

Sean Kelly and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel are delighted to present To cover the earth with a new mist, a monumental suite of nine large-scale paintings by Janaina Tschäpe for Art Basel Unlimited 2024. Among the artist’s most ambitious projects to date, this work harnesses and amplifies the expansive energy and sophisticated facture she brings to painting.

The title To cover the earth with a new mist is taken from the Octavio Paz poem, The House of Glances. For Roberto Matta (1987), a passage that forays into the geological state of the psyche, marrying together geographical and astronomical concerns. Similarly, Tschäpe’s layered, abstract landscapes feature imagery evocative of the natural world, suggesting growth, transition, and metamorphosis have, in recent years, taken on an entirely new level of exuberant confidence, both in terms of scale, sophistication of palette, and finesse in execution. Created entirely with oil paint and oil stick, these paintings exponentially expand the artist’s investigation into the relationship between gesture and painting and the mediation of physical and psychological states.

This installation is in part inspired by Tschäpe’s exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, in 2020-21 where her work was featured in dialogue with Claude Monet’s Les Numphéas (The Water Lilies). That exchange, along with her consideration of important cycles of painting throughout art history, including subjects as varied as Peter Paul Rubens, Marie de’ Medici Cycle, 1625, Barnett Newman’s Stations of the Cross, 1958, Mark Rothko’s paintings for the Rothko Chapel, and Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire, 1833, inform her ambitious contribution to this historical discourse.

This presentation is supported by Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro.

For additional information about Art Basel Unlimited, please visit artbasel.com

For information on Janaina Tschäpe, please visit skny.com

For media inquiries, please email Adair Lentini at Adair@skny.com

For all other inquiries, please email Cecile Panzieri at Cecile@skny.com

Image: © Janaina Tschäpe Courtesy: the artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles