Fair  June 25, 2025  Paul Laster

Highlights from Art Basel 2025

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Author: abby
Courtesy Art Basel.

Galerie Eva Presenhuber. 

Returning to its city of origin for the 55th year in the third week of June, Art Basel featured 289 top international galleries from 42 countries and territories. Celebrated as the world’s leading art fair, it attracted 88,000 visitors during both preview and public days, welcoming collectors, curators, and art enthusiasts from around the globe, including representatives from over 250 renowned museums and foundations.

“This year’s edition of Art Basel has shown the enduring strength, resilience, and global reach of the international art market,” said Maike Cruse, Director of Art Basel in Basel. “The energy in the halls and throughout the city was a powerful reminder of Basel’s role as a cultural hub and a catalyst for artistic exchange.”

Offering a broad view of the modern and contemporary art market, Art Basel displayed high-quality works from both established artists and emerging talents in the gallery booths, along with engaging public projects in the Parcours sector and spectacular large-scale installations and performances in the Unlimited section.

From Arturo Kameya’s storytelling installation addressing cultural myths about his fellow Peruvians, showcased by GRIMM in the Statements section, to Atelier Van Lieshout’s monumental procession of sculptural objects leading us to a better future, presented by four collaborating international galleries at Unlimited, these are the highlights from this year’s fair.

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Courtesy the artist and GRIMM, Amsterdam, London, and New York.
 Arturo Kameya, Every step is a payment in full, 2025. Dimensions and materials variable. Art Basel Statements. Courtesy the artist and GRIMM, Amsterdam, London, and New York.
Arturo Kameya at GRIMM

On view in Statements, which focuses on bold solo projects by emerging artists, and running concurrently with his solo show at the gallery’s flagship location in Amsterdam, Peruvian artist Arturo Kameya’s new installation, Every step is a payment in full, addresses myths about laziness and alcoholism among his fellow countrymen. A storyteller at heart, Kameya, based in Amsterdam and a graduate of the city’s renowned Rijksakademie, is known to create artwork that explores the narratives forming various versions of Peru’s socio-political history. 

Installed on painted walls matching the coloration of his works, he displayed more than a dozen paintings and sculptures, rendered in a distinctive pale palette of yellow and green acrylics with clay powder on wood, that tell the story of a growing focus on physical education after the loss of a war with Chile. Depicting broken football players who turned to drink, a guy sleeping the day away, and men wasting time watching an uninteresting cockfight, Kameya’s works tell an ironic tale of apathy. However, because of the ambitious nature of the project and the excellent execution of the work, we see that this talented artist is anything but idle.

Image: Arturo Kameya, Every step is a payment in full, 2025. Dimensions and materials variable. Art Basel Statements. 

About the Author

Paul Laster

Paul Laster is a writer, editor, curator, advisor, artist, and lecturer. New York Desk Editor for ArtAsiaPacific, Laster is also a Contributing Editor at Raw Vision and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art and a contributing writer for Art & Object, OculaGalerie, ArtsySculptureTime Out New YorkConceptual Fine Arts, and Two Coats of Paint. Formerly the Founding Editor of Artkrush, he began The Daily Beast’s art section and was Art Editor at Russell Simmons’ OneWorld Magazine. Laster has also been the Curatorial Advisor for Intersect Art & Design and an Adjunct Curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, now MoMA PS1.