Art Basel announces artist Trevor Paglen as curator of Zero 10 at Art Basel’s inaugural edition in Switzerland alongside Eli Scheinman
Now in its third edition, Zero 10—Art Basel’s global initiative dedicated to art of the digital era—makes its debut at Art Basel’s flagship fair with an expanded, open format curated by award-winning artist Trevor Paglen and digital art strategist Eli Scheinman. Located in the Event Hall on Messeplatz, alongside Art Basel Conversations, the initiative will feature its largest presentation to date, with 20 exhibitors showcasing a compelling selection of artists at the forefront of digital artistic practices. Zero 10 will remain freely accessible to the public during the week of Art Basel 2026 from June 17–21, with a Preview Day taking place on June 16.
Zero 10 reflects Art Basel’s ongoing commitment to artistic practices shaped by digital culture and their growing significance to the contemporary art landscape. Following successful editions during Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 and Art Basel Hong Kong 2026, its European debut in Switzerland expands the initiative’s curatorial scope while deepening dialogue among artists, institutions, collectors, new and existing audiences, and digitally native communities.
Trevor Paglen, 2026 LG Guggenheim Award recipient and MacArthur Fellow, joins digital art strategist Eli Scheinman to co-curate Basel’s edition of Zero 10 around the anchor theme The Condition. Examining life in a world saturated by digital imagery, computational systems and artificial intelligence, the presentation brings together historical and contemporary voices across digital, generative, and media art.
Noah Horowitz, CEO, Art Basel, said: “The art market is expanding, and the audiences driving that expansion are digitally native, globally connected, and looking for platforms that speak their language. Zero 10 at our Swiss flagship is our most ambitious answer to that challenge yet – a clear signal of our commitment to digital art as a cornerstone of our go-forward strategy — not a trend to observe, but a direction to lead. We are particularly honored to inaugurate Zero 10 in Basel hand-in-hand with Trevor Paglen, a pioneering artist trusted equally by the institutional art world and digital communities.”
Trevor Paglen, Co-curator, Zero 10, Art Basel 2026, said: “Looking across the last 50 years of instruction-based and computational work, from postwar experimentalism through today’s generative practices, I see a continuous thread: a body of work that understands the digital as a medium with its own properties, possibilities, and demands. The showcase becomes an intergenerational conversation about what it means to be alive in the digital era, led by artists who were thinking seriously about these questions long before the rest of the world caught up.”
Eli Scheinman, Co-Curator, Zero 10, Art Basel 2026, said: “I am thrilled to deliver Zero 10 at Art Basel’s flagship show in Basel and to further establish the initiative as a long-term platform for artistic practices shaped by digital culture. This third edition marks an important evolution for the initiative, with Trevor Paglen joining me as co-curator alongside expanded programming and the participation of leading international galleries and institutions. Together, we wish to foreground the historical and critical perspective to conversations that are becoming increasingly central to contemporary culture today.”
Zero 10’s third edition features 20 exhibitors, among them long-standing Art Basel galleries Hauser & Wirth (Zurich, New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Somerset, St. Moritz, Gstaad, Basel, Menorca, Chillida Leku, Monaco, Hong Kong), Marian Goodman (New York, Paris, Los Angeles), Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York), Max Estrella (Madrid), Almine Rech (Brussels, Paris, New York, Shanghai, Monaco, Gstaad), Esther Schipper (Paris, Berlin, Seoul) and Sprüth Magers (Berlin, London, Los Angeles, New York); and leading exhibitors with dedicated digital art programs, including ArtMeta, Art Blocks, Asprey Studio (Kent), bitforms gallery (New York), eastcontemporary (Milan), Fellowship (London, Marrakech, Porto Cervo, Los Angeles), Gazelli Art House (London), Interface Gallery (Breda), OFFICE IMPART (Berlin), Galerie Oniris (Rennes), Upstream Gallery (Amsterdam) and Nguyen Wahed (New York, London); as well as the first-time participation of a leading research institution: HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste; House of Electronic Arts) (Basel). Together, these presentations extend the dialogue beyond the traditional booth model and broaden the range of artistic voices, historical interpretations, technological mediums, and experiential formats through which digital culture is approached today.
Bridging contemporary and historical discourses across 16 single and four shared-booth presentations, the initiative brings together leading artists, international galleries, institutions, and digital platforms. The breadth of participation reflects the growing place of digital practices in the contemporary art market.
Highlights include:
- Hito Steyerl’s ‘Green Screen’ (2023), jointly presented by Esther Schipper and Andrew Kreps, features a large-scale installation combining an experimental LED wall made from recycled glass bottles with living plants and AI-generated imagery. Bioelectrical signals from the plants shape the work’s evolving sound and low-resolution animations of blooming flowers, creating a dialogue between organic life and digital systems. Reflecting on ecological interdependence and technological dependency, the installation reimagines plants as active agents within contemporary media environments.
- Hauser & Wirth’s presentation of Avery Singer’s ‘Shit Coin Maxi’ (2025), a composite layered image depicting two digital wallets found on Twitter. Drawing on recent paintings that examine the intersections of gambling, finance, and technology, the work reflects on the speculative culture surrounding cryptocurrency through Singer’s distinctive fusion of digital imagery and painterly techniques.
- Andreas Gursky’s ‘Ocean V’ (2010) at Sprüth Magers, part of the artist’s ongoing series in which he constructs composite oceanscapes, from satellite imagery inspired by a nighttime flight from Dubai to Melbourne. Using images taken 35,000 km above Earth, the work transforms oceans into vast, unfamiliar landscapes. Its deep midnight blues depart from conventional cartographic representations, evoking themes of borders, global conflict, and climate change while underscoring the sublime scale of planetary observation.
- Vera Molnar, a pioneer of digital art who began using computers in 1968, is showcased by Oniris.art and Interface Gallery with a body of work titled ‘When Algorithms Draw: The Vision of Vera Molnar’ (2026). As one of the first academically trained to embrace algorithmic image-making, Molnar’s presentation will highlight the central role of coding in her practice, highlighting how algorithmic thinking can become a powerful vehicle for artistic expression. Parallel to the show week, Molnar’s solo exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel ‘Vera Molnár. Possibilities’ showcases the printmaking oeuvre of the grande dame of computer art.
- HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste; House of Electronic Arts) will present a non-selling exhibition that historically contextualises net art — works created from the 1990s to early 2000s that use the Internet as a primary medium — centring its presentation around education and the evolution of web-based artistic practices.
