Michelangelo Pistoletto, Labirinto e Grande Pozzo, 1969/2008

I very much enjoyed Art Unlimited, more so than the large fair itself. In this section of Art Basel, larger works are on view and for sale.

Michelangelo Pistoletto created a maze of corrugated cardboard leading to a mirror in the center (the medium he is best known for).

Doug Aitken, Frontier, 2009

I am never certain what is happening or what message to take from Aitken’s films, but nevertheless, “Frontier” mesmerizes its viewers. Due to the “in the round” nature of the theater (a rectangular structure with openings that reveal snippets of the work to outsiders walking by), people standing and viewing this work from the inside become part of the art itself. Ed Ruscha is the central character in this video work whose imagery begins slowly and gradually becomes “more surreal and hallicinatory.”

Elodie Pong, After the Empire, 2008

Elodie Pong uses figures from history and Pop Culture who interact in most peculiar ways to explore questions of identity in her video, “After the Empire.” Karl Marx and Marilyn Monroe are paired; Minnie Mouse is paired with Elvis; and Martin Luther King, Jr is played by a woman. Simple in form the actors convey the message more than images or a detailed set. While powerful messages are conveyed, there is a lightness and humor to the work that makes it difficult to tear yourself away from.

Also worth mentioning were Kader Attia’s “Couscous Kaaba” in which a black cube is surrounded by couscous–a visually cool piece; Dan Flavin’s “three sets of tangented arcs in daylight and cool white” from 1969 (one of the few times he used curves in his lightworks); Rivane Neuenschwander and Cao Guimaraes’s “The Tenant” in which a soap bubble is videotaped floating through a house; Alicia Framis’s “Lost Astronaut,” a video that originally was part of Performa ‘09 in which the alter ego of the artist dresses in a vintage spacesuit wandering around New York City, and lastly, Christian Marclay’s video from 2008, “Solo” in which a woman basically gets herself off with an electric guitar. While not terribly original, I have to admit I (as well as most other viewers) found it hard to leave until she had satisfied herself as it seemed she was improvising when instructed to “elicit sounds from an electric guitar.”