The most music-minded thing at Art Basel Paris this year is free, and it sits outside the fair floor. From Thursday (Oct. 22) through Sunday (Oct. 25), GENER8ION, the duo of producer Surkin and director Romain Gavras, turns the Grand Palais’s Rotonde d’Antin into GOD HATES SPACE, an immersive installation built around a 12-meter, double-sided screen, Art Basel announced. Admission is free through Entrance 4.
It’s Art Basel’s first partnership with Live Nation, and the first time the Rotonde d’Antin has been part of the Paris program. Art Basel says the tie-up reflects “a shared ambition between Live Nation France and Art Basel Paris to bring artistic and cultural scenes into dialogue.”
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GENER8ION is best known for “STORM,” the Yung Lean short film that went from viral to the MTV VMAs. Art Basel says the video has passed 37 million YouTube views and the song 60 million Spotify streams. GOD HATES SPACE extends the near-future story of the duo’s album LOVE & TEARS, out June 12, where the track “God Hates Space,” featuring 070 Shake, is one of the opening chapters.
Gavras has directed Justice’s “Stress,” M.I.A.’s “Born Free,” Jamie xx’s “Gosh” and Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild.” Surkin, a French producer and DJ from the French Touch 2.0 generation, scored Gavras’s film Athena.
The fair’s other pop-culture play is brand-led. Ray-Ban, a Host Partner alongside Guerlain, is debuting Ray-Ban Impossible Frames, which Art Basel’s press dossier describes as an exhibition “challenging young visionary artists to reject the logic of materials, structure, and function in favor of pure acts of visual defiance.” Complex has the first look: a tactile installation of plasterboard, concrete and chrome, with neon light, aluminum and cable-wrapped brickwork. “The feasible replicates what exists, while the impossible creates new worlds,” Ray-Ban said in notes shared with the outlet. Complex doesn’t name the artists.
The fair itself, in its fifth edition and the first under director Karim Crippa, brings 211 galleries from 41 countries and territories to the Grand Palais, per Art Basel. Its invitation-only Avant-Première for galleries and their principal clients is Tuesday (Oct. 20). Preview days follow Wednesday (Oct. 21) and Thursday (Oct. 22), the Vernissage is Thursday afternoon, and the public days run Oct. 23 to 25.
Art Basel’s flirtation with club and pop culture isn’t new. In June, Thomas Bangalter co-hosted a warehouse rave at Art Basel in Basel. In Paris, Wallpaper lists the musician Eartheater among the artists at the new Reference Festival during Paris Art Week, and W Magazine flags Rita Ackermann, who had a 2000s girl band called Angelblood, showing her 1996 puppet show at Galerie Allen. Our earlier explainer covers the Miu Miu commission, the Tracey Emin sculptures and the Oh La La! rehang.
GOD HATES SPACE opens Thursday, a day before the public days begin.
- Public days
- Oct. 23–25, Grand Palais, Paris
- Preview
- Oct. 21–22, by invitation
- Galleries
- 211 from 41 countries and territories
- GOD HATES SPACE
- Oct. 22–25, Rotonde d’Antin, free
