Basel Social Club Turns a Disused UBS Office Into a Maze of Contemporary Art
Basel Social Club’s fifth edition has transformed a former UBS corporate office in Basel into a disorienting, room-by-room encounter with contemporary art. The fair, which runs through Saturday, June 21 at Erdbeergraben 1, unfolds like a puzzle: corridors narrow, rooms shift shape, and the line between workplace and exhibition space keeps dissolving.
That instability is part of the point. Visitors move through a building that feels at once familiar and slightly off-kilter, with installations appearing in unexpected corners and recognizable art-world figures surfacing amid the crowd. The result is less a conventional fair than an immersive environment, one that rewards wandering and a willingness to lose one’s bearings.
Among the most compact but effective presentations is a preview of Canadian artist Chloe Wise’s “Extrasensory” show at KBH.G. A small ground-floor display offers a glimpse of her Alien Melodrama film installation, in which Wise appears as the extraterrestrial Edith. The excerpt leans into absurdist humor, using the premise of an alien encounter to suggest how human fantasies about the nonhuman often reveal more about us than about anything beyond us.
Elsewhere, New York-based artist Nick Doyle’s Human Resources (2024), presented by Brussels gallery Stems Gallery, turns corporate drabness into a fetishized stage set. Built from repurposed cubicle walls, ceiling panels, and filing cabinets, the greyscale installation is both deadpan and unnerving. Visitors can order drinks labeled “blood,” “sweat,” or “tears,” then spin a wheel to select from hundreds of cataloged fetishes — a joke that lands somewhere between office satire and social critique.
French new media artist Vincent Moulinet’s Daddy loves you too (2026), shown by Munich’s Caldo Worldwide, pushes the atmosphere further into uneasy territory. Using game-engine logic, the work imagines a world of submission and control, while a partially redacted printed email nearby introduces a more explicit note of patriarchal coercion.
Zurich dealer Fabian Lang also brought Xiao Guo Hui’s Martyrs of Beauty, a series of contemporary twists on Jan van Eyck’s Adam and Eve panels, alongside Mark Wallinger’s cardboard cutouts of generic “Non-Player Character” figures. The latter are so understated that they initially read as background noise before their strangeness becomes apparent. Barcelona’s Bombon Projects presented Bernat Daviu’s 2021 installation, adding another layer to a fair that thrives on surprise, ambiguity, and the pleasures of getting lost.
Basel Social Club remains open daily from 4 p.m. to midnight, with an underground club running until 3 a.m. The event’s appeal lies not only in its roster of artists, but in the way its setting turns viewing into a physical, almost cinematic experience.
