Art Basel teams up with Sarah Andelman for the first edition of The Art Basel Shop, a new concept store marking the brand's first foray into retail, launching at Art Basel in Basel from June 11-16
Debuting at the 2024 edition of the Swiss fair this month, The Art Basel Shop is a novel concept store showcasing a selection of bespoke lifestyle products that celebrate and extend the Art Basel experience and conjure the unique spirit of the contemporary art world. Curated by Sarah Andelman – co-founder and former creative director of the iconic Parisian concept store Colette, and founder of Just An Idea – the inaugural edition of The Art Basel Shop presents new, exclusive, and rare and special-edition collectibles across art, design, fashion, and publishing, available to fair visitors and the public for a limited time during Art Basel in Basel 2024. The Art Basel Shop marks the organization's first venture into owned product design and distribution, as part of Art Basel's ongoing mission to elevate its offering across its world-class platform, enhance opportunities for artists, as well as deepen engagement with its ever-growing community of art professionals and enthusiasts.
Hayley Romer, Chief Growth Officer, Art Basel, said: 'From culture lovers to established art patrons, our audience has a strong desire for products that bottle and preserve the utterly unique experience of being at Art Basel long after the show closes. Expertly curated and brought to life by artist and brand collaborations at the highest level, The Art Basel Shop is fully aligned with our vision to create new ways to engage and positively impact our audience, to deliver more value to galleries, artists, and cultural partners, and to materially celebrate and reinforce Art Basel as a best-in-class, unmissable cultural experience.'
Acclaimed tastemaker Sarah Andelman – known for her trend-setting approach to retail, with recent brand collaborations including Diptyque and LVMH-owned Le Bon Marché – said of her collaboration with Art Basel: 'I am deeply passionate about artist editions of all kinds – from books to postcards, rare collectibles to T-shirts. It is a tremendous privilege to curate this pilot initiative with Art Basel, an exceptional platform for delivering fortified artist collaborations and products of artist integrity, and a true liaison of art, design, fashion, publishing, and beyond. This first edition of The Art Basel Shop reflects the diversity of products that speak to collectors and art lovers alike: rare, exclusive, surprising, the products hail from all corners of the world while being tailor-fit for the show's host city and presenting artists.'
For the first time, visitors to Art Basel in Basel will be able to purchase from an array of memorabilia of the show. Paying homage to the fair’s rich and vibrant visual history, from iconic campaigns to key moments captured on film and in photo, AB by Art Basel will premiere a range of apparel and accessories, alongside a capsule collection of 'goodies' inspired by the fair's trademark Unlimited sector available exclusively at The Art Basel Shop in Basel this month.
The Artist Collection, a line of products developed by Art Basel in collaboration with an artist featured at the fair, will be inaugurated with leading American, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim, whose seminal work in sound, performance, drawing, installation, and video explore linguistic and cultural translation through a unique approach to representing sound and language.
Available exclusively at Art Basel in Basel 2024, The Artist Collection includes a curio, ex-libris stamp; a baby rattle in wood produced by the French children’s musical toymaker NINA & MILES; a collectible jigsaw puzzle emblazoned ‘THE SOUND OF NO FIGHT,’ recalling the visual vocabulary of the artist’s ‘open caption’ mural works installed across the city of Manchester in England in 2021; and an array of clothing and accessories inscribed with the artist’s iconic handwriting. Also featured will be a special, craft dinnerware set produced by Non Sans Raison, acclaimed luxury porcelain maker from Limoges, France, with designs from Kim's 'clock' works, which draw on text, signs, and symbols from sign languages and various visual communication systems from Venn diagrams to feeling charts and musical notation. Kim’s collection for The Art Basel Shop creates dialogue with her large-scale project debuting in Unlimited, Art Basel in Basel’s sector dedicated to monumental artworks: Presented by WHITE SPACE, 'FOMO Scores' (2024) comprises 15 musical score-shaped canvases inscribed with handwritten requests by the artist, inspired by the shape and movement of the arms describing a musical score in American Sign Language.
Among the products hand-picked by Andelman and pre-launching at the store: the Jean-Michel Basquiat Ferris Wheel Toy by Luna Luna, a spinning, miniature wooden replica of the artist's fairground ride at the historic, 1987 artist-designed amusement park in Hamburg, Germany, which was revived and relaunched in Los Angeles earlier this year; and the AMEN PICASSO FIGUE scented candle, adorned with a design after the artist’s 1932 ‘Étude pour une joueuse de mandoline’ and enrobed in mushroom carbon-negative packaging, the most recent addition to the Grasse-based Maison's line of first-in-kind and sustainable, high-end design candles produced in collaboration with art historian and curator Diana W. Picasso for the Musée National Picasso-Paris.
The Art Basel Shop will also host the worldwide launch of solo, diptych, and triptych collectible skate decks by THE SKATEROOM featuring designs by the iconic American artist Cindy Sherman, the latest in the Belgian brand's portfolio of high-profile artist collaborations.
Furthermore, The Art Basel Shop will
preview a range of new and limited-edition artist books, including 'Urs Fischer: Monumental Sculpture,’ a major work
on Swiss artist Urs Fischer's
large-scale sculptures to date, published by Gagosian; 'Artists at 5' by
British artist Ryan Gander, which
brings together 150 portraits of artists as children, published by Mennour; as
well as 75 of the 1,250 limited-run books from British artist David Shrigley's ‘Pulped Fiction’ project, in which the
artist reproduced George Orwell's canonical dystopian novel 'Nineteen
Eighty-Four' entirely from the pulped remains of unwanted copies of Dan Brown’s
2003 novel ‘The Da Vinci Code.' ‘Basel,’ Louis Vuitton's pocketbook travel guide
to the Swiss city, will also debut at the store.
The Art Basel Shop will be located in Hall 1.0 of Art Basel in Basel and will open to fairgoers and the public from Tuesday, June 11 to Sunday, June 16, 2024. On the occasion of the store's opening, Art Basel will host a week-long series of onsite events, including:
- A Meet-and-Greet & Product Signing with Sarah Andelman & Christine Sun Kim, celebrating the launch of the artist's collection for The Art Basel Shop | Tuesday, June 11, 2.30-3.30pm | The Art Basel Shop (Hall 1.0)
- Q&A with artist David Shrigley on 'David Shrigley Presents…Pulped Fiction' | Wednesday, June 12, 12.00-12.30pm | Magazines sector (Hall 1.0). Followed by a Meet-and-Greet & Book Signing with David Shrigley | Wednesday, June 12, 12.30-1.00pm | The Art Basel Shop (Hall 1.0)
- A Meet-and-Greet & Book Signing with artist Ryan Gander, celebrating the launch of 'Artists at 5' | Wednesday, June 12, 4.30-5.30pm | The Art Basel Shop (Hall 1.0)
Download the full press release here.