For Art Basel, Layr presents a curated selection of artists who explore the human body as a site of personal, historical, and material resonance. Moving away from the concept of the artist as possessing a singular, isolated voice, this presentation highlights how artists are shaped by—and react to—their social, political, and material environments. Stano Filko's Boy Angel (1983), created during the Slovakian artist's time in New York, captures a chaotic period of personal and social transition, parsing immediate socio-political realities while representing a communal body. Similarly, Keith Haring's subway drawing, Untitled (Two Figures and Clock) (1981-83), utilizes a collective, symbolic language to address an oppressive environment. Offering a counter-narrative of hope, Haring's work echoes the ethos of the earlier Soviet artist Anna Andreeva, who operated within the constraints of Soviet Socialism. In Abstraction (1974), Andreeva utilized floral patterns as a conduit for Modernist and avant-garde abstraction, employing botanical motifs as camouflage to bypass censorship and explore fundamental embodied experiences. Continuing to bridge disparate traditions, Gaylen Gerber's Supports blend Western sculpture's focus on proportion and balance with the studied precision and spontaneous expression of traditional Japanese sumi-e painting. Gerber's work relies on a phenomenological approach, rooting understanding in bodily experience and sensation. Gerber's emphasis on direct experience is shared by Benjamin Hirte's marble sculptures—works that represent the body and the pleasure of movement. While challenging conventional expectations of a single, conclusive viewpoint, the artist offers multiple, singular moments of recognition that question identity across diverse contexts. Conversely, Philipp Timischl's Quite a bit of spilled coffee (2025) and Leah Ke Ye Zheng's I Ching No. 64 (2026) are structured very differently but both expand painting beyond its physical limits through digital extensions and divination frameworks respectively to expand the discourse surrounding contemporary painting. These systems help determine the composition with fluidity, balancing continuous transitions in a way that demonstrates change with effortless composure. The group of artists presented at Art Basel all share a willingness to be vulnerable without losing the distinction between an artwork and the artist's life. Ultimately, each artist still acts as an analytical and corporeal reflection of their time. This presentation functions as an evolving, embodied rhyme where the body serves not just as a subject of representation, but as a lens for analyzing the impact of historical context on lived experience.

ABOUT ARTISTS : Anna Andreeva,Stano Filko,Gaylen Gerber,Benjamin Hirte,Philipp Timischl,Leah Ke Yi Zheng,Keith Haring

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