Art Basel’s Zero 10 in Basel asks a larger question about digital art’s place in the market
At Art Basel in Basel last week, the fair’s digital art sector Zero 10 arrived with a new title, a larger footprint, and a noticeably more self-conscious sense of history. Titled The Condition, the section made its Swiss debut on Messeplatz with 20 exhibitors, the most in Zero 10’s history, and a curatorial framework shaped by Eli Scheinman and Trevor Paglen.
The strongest presentation came from Fellowship, which placed three John Gerrard works together for the first time: “Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas)” (2017), “Flare (Oceania)” (2022), and “STANDARD” (2023). Seen side by side, the works gave the sector a rare emotional coherence. Their scale and restraint stood apart from the more spectacle-driven digital art that has often defined the category, and they sharpened a question that hovered over the entire section: is digital art still speaking primarily to the community that built it, or is it trying to claim a broader place in contemporary art?
That tension ran through the fair. Several exhibitors leaned hard into historical lineage, as if digital art still needed to justify itself through precedent. Toronto-based artist 0xDEAFBEEF showed hand-welded oscilloscopes with Asprey Studio alongside more familiar digital works, explicitly linking the presentation to Ben Laposky (1914-2000), whose oscilloscope-based prints were also on view. The gesture was not subtle, but it was revealing. In Basel, digital art seemed less interested in novelty than in proving that its roots reach deep into the history of conceptual and systems-based practice.
That impulse was visible elsewhere. Oniris and Interface Gallery presented works by Vera Molnar in a display that felt more academic than fair-minded, while ArtMeta’s “Digital Masterpieces: From Code to Canon” gathered works by Charles Csuri and Ken Knowlton in a dense, scholarly installation. Georg Bak’s enthusiasm for the field was evident, but the presentation sometimes felt pitched to specialists rather than to the broader fair audience.
There were, however, moments of real clarity. Gazelli Art House’s survey of Harold Cohen offered a persuasive counterpoint to William Mapan’s generative works at Art Blocks, suggesting a lineage rather than a rupture between generations of digital practice. Sprüth Magers also presented Andreas Gursky’s “Ocean V” (2010), though the work appeared without the contextual framing that many other stands in Zero 10 seemed determined to supply.
That may be the central takeaway from this edition of Zero 10. The sector has grown larger and more ambitious, but it is still negotiating how much explanation digital art needs, and how much confidence it can now claim on its own.
