The young satellite fair Minor Attractions, running parallel to Frieze London, returns this Autumn together with some of the most exciting contemporary art galleries and non-profit art spaces from North America to Central and Eastern Europe. Following the footsteps of the original Armory Show or Loop Barcelona and non-traditional fairs such as Basel Social Club or Spring/Break, the second edition will take over the rooms and common areas of The Mandrake and offer a robust performance and evening program.

Luxury, peace and pleasure (luxe, calme et volupté) −the poetic leitmotifs of Charles Baudelaire’s poem «Invitation to the Voyage», dating 1857− capture the very essence of Henri Matisse’s artistic output. This Autumn, the Fondation Beyeler departs from these guiding principles to invite visitors on a journey spanning the full range of the modern artist’s career. The much-awaited retrospective features 70 iconic and rarely-seen works including sculptures, paintings, drawings, and cutouts from major museums and private collections. 

Göksu Kunak’s new performance / installation at Sophiensæle is based on the Susurluk scandal, a notorious car crash in Turkey in the 1990s that led to the discovery of criminal links between state institutions, the drug mafia and deep state relations. Kunak reflects on the policy of concealing and erasing and uses the accident as a metaphor for a corrupted patriarchal, political system. “Innocence” is an attempt of a genealogy of corruption and the effects of western imperialism on the country and the Middle East. 

Much visited, sung about, admired and filmed: The Wannsee lido is a Berlin icon and its architecture is a listed building. What most Berliners don’t realise, however, is that most of the complex is now empty. While up to 12,000 bathers enjoy the sandy beach on summery days, a unique architectural monument — and a large spatial resource with great potential — is falling apart just metres behind it. The exhibition Wanna See Wannsee? will show how architecture and history can be combined with sustainable reuse: to save and restore the monument and, in doing so, carry the torch of the social idea of the lido and its founder Herman Clajus.  

Following the great success of the Basel Social Club 2023 at a former mayonnaise factory, this upcoming edition will take place outdoors, on 50 hectares of farmland fields. The week-long event, core of which are landscape, agriculture, and farm animals, will offer a rather slow art experience — in seeming stark contrast with Art Basel. Fellas’ venturing out there will be met with an open-air exhibition proposed by galleries, farm-to-table gastronomy, and an impressive performance program. The latter, curated by the Performance Agency, will count with Margaret Raspé, Jean Tinguely, Paulo Nazareth, Juliette Blightman and many more.

The Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo at the 60th Venice Biennale presents a sculptural installation by Doruntina Kastrati titled The Echoing Silences of Metal and Skin, which addresses feminized labor and workplace inequality. Investigating the joint deindustrialization of the economy and deregulation of the market, Kastrati encounters the (im)material forms of precarious employment in light industries in the aftermath of the 1999 Kosovo War. The installation draws on the oral histories conducted with female employees of a Turkish delight factory in Prizren (Kosovo) and consists of four freestanding metal sculptures alluding to the surgical implants, many need to undergo as a result of working in a standing position. Charged with symbolic meaning, the pavilion honor first-person narratives and create incisive associations between exploitative labor practices and the embodiment of foreign metal on the worker’s knees.