Art Basel in Basel 2026 | Kabinett: Booth E13

Venue ｜Messe Basel (Messeplatz 10, 4058 Basel, Switzerland)

Kabinett Booth｜E13

Participating Artists｜Ava Hsueh, Yao Jui-Chung, Yuan Hui-Li, Jam Wu, Chen Ching-Yuan

Opening Hours｜

VIPPreview (By invitation only)

06.16(Tue.), 06.17(Wed.) 11:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.

Vernissage

06.17(Wed.) 5:00p.m.-8:00 p.m.

Public Days

06.18(Thur.)-06.21(Sun.) 11:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.

Tina Keng Gallery in Kabinett |

"A Grammar of the Strait: Fables and Fragments"

Centered on contemporary Taiwanese art, Tina Keng Gallery’s Kabinett sector project, titled “A Grammar of the Strait: Fables and Fragments,” seeks to channel the dialectical energy and qualitative transformations of artistic vocabulary observed across generations in the main Galleries sector into the island's contemporary context, anchoring this trajectory of creative transit within the Taiwan Strait. Driven by topological and geopolitical pressures, the Strait is characterized by surging waves and torrential undercurrents. It serves as a metaphor for a demarcation line, yet within its fluid state, it fosters continuous infiltration, convergence, and sedimentation; it is precisely this rupture and isolation that inversely opens a new chapter of history. The Kabinett presentation deploys the "Strait" as an allegory for the resilience of art, forging spaces of expression amid constraints and tension. The exhibition delves into how Taiwanese artists leverage a series of "fragments"—shattered evidence, residual traces, and fractured memories—to generate enduring "fables" steeped in metaphor and multiple significations. In doing so, they respond to the alienating contradictions, naturalized atmospheres of coercion, and institutional pressures born of the Strait, culminating in a decolonial reinterpretation of canonical culture.

The exhibition opens with Ava Hsueh, whose work was recently acquired for the permanent collection of the British Museum. Hsueh interprets abstraction as a slow sedimentation within time, capturing transient moments. Through a precisely calibrated field and sequentially unfolding pulses, her work cushions the density of time rather than merely depicting it. Her painting establishes rules of layering and deposition, profoundly manifesting acts of accumulation, revision, and restraint—a precise response to the self that resonates with the collective tension and anxiety of a shared epochal undercurrent. With this as an anchor, the "fragments" of historical and cultural structures are transformed into tangible textures and spatial somatic experiences within the exhibition space. Jam Wu extends traditional paper-cutting into "paper weaving." Within the intertwined warp and weft of paper strips, the cut edges become porous apertures for breath, allowing thoughts and emotions to subtly permeate. Concurrently, Yuan Hui-Li deconstructs and reconstructs classical brush-and-ink syntax from within. Fusing and appropriating the kinetic energy of calligraphic strokes, she transmutes traditional cun (texture) strokes into a sensible semiotic system, pushing the boundaries of layering and texture in ink painting.

If fragments are the "lexicon" artists use for reassembly, then "fables" are the syntax that links them to interrogate the era. Accordingly, Chen Ching-Yuan constructs illusory historical scenes fraught with a sense of déjà-vu. By implanting truncated symbols and faint clues, he deliberately maintains narrative coherence in a state of perpetual deferral, reflecting how collective memory is assembled, circulated, and contested within fables of shifting semantics. Yao Jui-Chung delivers another fable by subverting historical classics. He playfully yet powerfully upends inherited cultural authority, soberly exposing how so-called "orthodoxy" is constructed, preserved, and subsequently deconstructed amid the island’s intrinsic tensions.

Echoing these conceptual frameworks, the spatial design of the Kabinett sector features a rectangular cube with dual narrow access channels. It acts as a nexus where oceanic flows of thought and imagery converge, welcoming viewers from diverse cultural contexts.

The surging ocean currents signify both geopolitical confluences and the navigational tracks of linearly advancing time. Armed with an acute perception of the tensions inherent in the convergence and dispersion of historical fragments, alongside a fluid vision that traverses boundaries and moves between the internal and external, Tina Keng Gallery contextualizes masterworks of Asian modern and contemporary art. In doing so, it responds to the contemporary zeitgeist focusing on Asian discourses, continuously expanding the interpretation of the dialectical relationship that bridges 20th-century East Asian art philosophy with present-day dynamics.

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