Rita Ackermann  | Summer 2001 | View Large PDF (1.3 MB) | View text-only PDF
A cool/scary drawing show of works often ripped straight from her notebook. William Blake meets Henry Darger.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila  | October 2002 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
The Finnish videomaker demonstrates the real potential of video as medium - often with quietly crazy heroines.

Matthew Benedict | Sumnmer 2006 | View PDF
A nautically-themed show from one of my favorite under-rated painters. Seriously, seek out his work.

Ilse Bing | February 2001 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
Stunning cityscape photos by the German artist once called "The Queen of the Leica."

Alighiero e Boetti  | October 2004  | View PDF
Great show, especially for a commercial galley, combining two museum pieces from this late artist. Especially
great: Lavoro Postale, a mail-art piece of sprawling scope and complexity, yet lyric nonetheless.

Louise Bourgeois  | April 2000  | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
In her nineties, still the world's toughest artist.

Candice Breitz | March 2004 | View JPG
Video installation walks the thin line between feminist mocking and feminine envy vis-à-vis Hollywood starlets.

Angela Bulloch  | Summer 2000 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
The (sort-of) YBAer departs from her past interactive work, creating giant pixels. Not convinced.

Davide Cantoni  | February 2003 | View JPG
Using thick paper and a magnifying glass, a young Italian explores appropriation. Sizzling, lacy work.

David Claerbout  | May 2003 | View JPG
Is it video, or photo, or installation? Yes. A young Belgian artist fluidly fuses mediums.

Francesco Clemente  | Summer 2001 | View Large PDF (1.3 MB) | View text-only PDF
Italy's eighties painting star mounts a mezzo-mezzo show. Coasting, Clemente, coasting...

Thomas Demand  | May 2000  | View Large PDF (1MB) | View text-only PDF
German artist does amazing things with paper, recreating scenes from newspaper photos,
then photographing them.

Sylvie Fleury  | January 2001  | View text-only PDF
Geneva's rockstar artiste traipses along the line between glamour, irony and kitsch, but doesn't trip.

Robert Frank  | Sumnmer 2006 | View PDF
The Fotomuseum Winterthur's retrospective juxtaposes Frank's masterful early work with his shakier later experiments.

Jacqueline Heer  | February 2002  | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
The Swiss photographer uses a secret method to make pix with portent in her new North Carolina homeland.

Candida Hofer  | January 2002 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
The older sister of "Struffsky" makes her mark, strikingly. Is she the best of the Becher students?

Rebecca Horn  | May 2000 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
The German artist exhibits her past mastery of surrealist mechanisms; but a newer style stumbles.

Theresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler  | January 2002 | View text-only PDF
Hubbard and Birchler, a pair well worth tracking, pull off an amazing Mobius-strip video.

Anselm Kiefer  | April 2002 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
In a mini-retrospective at Basel's Fondation Beyeler, Kiefer shows works
monumental in both their scale and resonance.

Rezi van Lankveld  | November 2003 | View JPG
Young Dutch painter makes marvelous work - mottled, murky, muddy - like half-remembered images from dreams.

Ana Mendieta  | March 2003 | View JPG
In a retrospective for the Cuban body artist, who died far too young under circumstances still hotly
debated, we see her work's ever-evolving obsession with mortality.

Adrian Paci  | Summer 2005 | View JPG
Young Albanian artist shows moody work that benefits from its refreshing lack of ironic distance.

Darryl Pottorf  | October 1999 | View text-only PDF
Pottorf's technique echoes (too closely) that of his master, Robert Rauschenberg.

Thomas Ruff (1999)  | December 1999 | View Large PDF (1.3 MB) | View text-only PDF
The German photographer experiments once again - unsuccessfully, this time - with the political photomontage.

Thomas Ruff (2001) | June 2001  | View text-only PDF
Another experiment by Ruff: Digitally reworking Internet porn. Sometimes to interesting effect. Often not.

Santiago Sierra  | November 2002 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
The Spanish conceptual artist pushes the global underclass in the artworld elite's face.

Roman Signer  | October 2001 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
A Swiss master, Signer creates art using an unmatched mix of humor, machines and explosives.

Beat Streuli  | February 2003 | View JPG
Using video and photo, the Swiss artist transforms NYC's Prince and Broadway into a human pantheon. Superb.

Stefan Thiel  | November 2003 | View JPG
Using an ancient technique - paper-cutting - Thiel makes poetic pieces, sometimes photographic in their composition, sometimes abstract.

Miroslav Tichy  | October 2005 | View JPG
Some of the people I respect most in the artworld love Miroslav Tichy's work. Others find it boring dirty-old-manism.
So far at least, I don't get it. To me, this work is more interesting as a study in desire than as photography.

Jeff Wall  | December 2005 | View JPG
i can scarcely imagine an artist better suited to Basel's Schaulager space than Jeff Wall, master of
constructed photograpy. And vice-versa. They should have made it a permanent installation.

Saskia Olde Wolbers | October 2001 | View Large PDF | View text-only PDF
The Dutch videomaker uses white paint and a tiny wireframe to create a piece that looks
digital. Stunning. Unknown then, Wolbers won the UK's Becks Future prize three years later.