For ‘Choir,’ Katharina Grosse Makes Art Basel Her Canvas
Her largest urban intervention to date.
Summary
- Katharina Grosse is the featured artist for this year’s Messeplatz Project commission at Art Basel’s marquee Swiss fair.
- Titled CHOIR, the immersive artwork wraps the fair entrance in blooms of magenta spray, presenting a powerful meditation on freedom and control against the clamor that awaits inside.
- On view through June 22, the piece revels in the ephemeral and otherwordly — “as if a vast painting has flown through, landed briefly and left its residue behind,” the artist described.
Katharina Grosse has long been fixture at Art Basel, and this year her contribution is more than just a must-see — it’s nearly impossible to miss. For the 2025 Messeplatz Project, the fair tapped the seminal German artist to transform the pavilion with CHOIR, her largest urban intervention to date.
With an industrial spray gun in-hand, Grosse envelops the Herzog & de Meuron-designed space with sweeping blooms of magenta. The familiar architecture is disrupted and reimagined, as surfaces dissolve into vibrant fields of color. Curated by Natalia Grabowska of London’s Serpentine, the work creates a fully immersive environment, recasting the venue into an artwork in its own right, drawing in excitement for all that awaits inside the exhibition hall.
In Grosse’s words, CHOIR examines humanity’s “obsession with control” and “desire for freedom,” likening the work to a polyphonic chorus — a collection of voices momentarily held together in shifting harmony. The paint-splashed surfaces act as a rupture in the otherwise tightly-run interior, inviting spontaneity, impermanence and a disruption of the everyday.
A place and a moment at once, “CHOIR is transient and unrepeatable,” the artist wrote in a recent post. “It’s as if a vast painting has flown through, landed briefly and left its residue behind. It belongs to everyone and no one.”
The piece is now on view in Switzerland through June 22. Check out Art Basel’s website to learn more about CHOIR, the Messeplatz Project and programming for this year’s edition.
Messe Basel
Messeplatz 10
4058 Basel
Switzerland
