Conversations | The Artists and the Collector: Katharina Grosse, Firelei Báez, and Komal Shah
Art Basel in Basel 2023, June 15
The relationship that develops between an artist and a collector is at the heart of the art world. Artists Katharina Grosse, Firelei Báez and collector Komal Shah gather to reflect on the challenges they have had to overcome to present female perspectives in their respective practices and collections. What frameworks still need to be put in place to address underrepresentation? This discussion offers insight into the connections between individuals shaped by their shared vision of art.
‣ Komal Shah, collector and philanthropist Shah Garg Foundation, Atherton, California
‣ Katharina Grosse, artist, Berlin
‣ Firelei Báez, artist, New York
‣ Moderator: Mark Godfrey, art historian and curator, London
‣ Komal Shah is an avid collector and philanthropist, whose mission-driven work is focused on advancing scholarship about the significant achievements of women. She has developed an expansive collection that celebrates the work of women artists across two generations. She is responsible for establishing the popular talk series Artists on the Future at Stanford and sits on numerous institutional boards, including SFMOMA, Haas School of Business Berkeley, Stanford Art Council. Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection (2023) was published as part of her ongoing efforts to introduce audiences to the vast contributions of women artists.
‣ The Berlin and New Zealand based German painter Katharina Grosse systematically questions and expands the field of painting. Regarding it as a relational, spatial and fundamentally performative phenomenon, she began working in a spraying technique in the late 1990ties. With their sweeping gesture and exuberant vitality her works transgress spatial and cognitive boundaries alike and call for a new culture of reception. Currently her exhibition Studio Paintings, 1988-2022 is on view at Kunstmuseum Bern. Grosse is represented by Gagosian, Galerie Max Hetzler and Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder.
‣ The New York-based artist Firelei Báez casts diasporic histories into an imaginative realm, reworking visual references drawn from the past to explore new possibilities for the future. In exuberantly colorful works on paper and canvas, large-scale sculptures, and immersive installations, Báez combines representational cues that span from hair textures to textile patterns, plant life, folkloric and literary references, and wide-ranging emblems of healing and resistance. Báez is represented by James Cohan Gallery, New York.
‣ Dr. Mark Godfrey is a curator and art historian from London. Recent projects include Laura Owens and Vincent Van Gogh; Jacqueline Humphries's show at the Wexner (both 2021); and ‘Nicole Eisenman: What Happene’Museum Brandhorst, Munich and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2023). From 2007-2021 he was a senior curator at Tate Modern where he curated and co-curated retrospectives of Roni Horn, Francis Alys, Alighiero Boetti, Richard Hamilton, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Franz West, and Olafur Eliasson, as well as ‘Soul of a Nation’.
The Art Basel 2023 Conversations program is curated by Emily Butler. Coordination and support: Arianna Guidi.