BASEART 2026
International Art Fair
"An art fair that lasts longer and connects deeper."
From the Mongolian steppe to the streets of Tehran, from California to Siberia — BASEART 2026 Edition I brought together 26 artists from 9 countries across 17 days at Basement16 in Cologne. Curated with rigour and driven by the belief that meaningful encounters between art and people take time, Edition I was a fully booked debut that drew press coverage from the Kölner Stadtanzeiger and established BASEART as a serious international platform.
What follows is a portrait of every artist who made it happen.
Featured in Kölner StadtanzeigerThe Artists of Edition I
26 artists
Born in the wide steppe of Dornod province, his sculptures and installations use metal, wood, and clay to explore the invisible connection between humans and nature. His creative process is guided by patience, resilience, and respect for natural growth — reflecting a life lived on the Mongolian steppe.
A painter living and working in Tehran, Harvard University Gala Art Prize winner 2019. Her painting Inner Child is held in the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art; her work has been shown internationally from New York to Armenia.
Born in Siberia, expelled from the USSR in 1978 after staging the country's first underground performances — he was subjected to political persecution as a member of the nonconformist art scene. Working with molecular structures such as cancer cells and leaf forms, his practice bridges the natural sciences with the humanities. Professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen and University of Siegen.
Associate Director of the Sculpture Department at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. Grand Prize winner at the Shanghai Dong'an Riverside Public Art International Competition; contributor to the China Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. His public artworks stand in Shanghai and Ordos.
Expelled from East Germany in 1983 for political reasons, his signature dot-grid paintings and sculptures explore the threshold between two-dimensionality and metaphysical space. Honorary Member of the Szechenyi Academy of Literature and Arts Budapest; collaborator with architects Oscar Niemeyer and Kenneth King.
World-renowned actor Markus Gertken, working under the name pain-T, created the Palagonism series for BASEART 2026 — self-portraits focused exclusively on the reflection visible in his mirrored sunglasses. Inspired by Villa Palagonia in Sicily, the place Goethe once called the wildest thing he had ever seen.
An oncologist, surgeon, and award-winning photographer. First Prize at the Artist of Europe Award, Florence 2024. Through her dual practice — surgical and artistic — her large-format photographs ask a single, recurring question: what connects us as human beings?
Conceptual photographer and doctoral researcher exploring the relationship between perception, emotion, and inner awareness. Member of BBK Germany and IAA, founder of The Light Archive — a research-based platform for therapeutic photography. Exhibitions spanning Miami Art Week, Berlin, London, Shanghai, Budapest, Beijing, and Tokyo.
Dr. phil. from the Kunstakademie Münster and Director of the Center for International Art Exchange at Ningbo City College. His CMYK series places calligraphic brushstrokes on rice paper in direct dialogue with the geometric logic of the four-colour printing industry.
Trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture and Design, with experience in scenography and sculpture in Berlin. Her dark painted surfaces function as both resistance and holding space — areas where colour thickens into an intensity that provokes reflection. Her works live in the tension between the raw and the poetic.
Beginning as an investigative photographer at the Central Laboratory of the Gendarmerie before dedicating himself entirely to art in 2022, his work explores the evocative power of nature, rare light, and celestial moments. Co-founder of the Artists' Collective of the Pays de Saint-Malo; official valuation by auctioneer in 2024.
Based in Bamberg, active internationally since 1991 with exhibitions in Italy, Cuba, China, and major German art fairs. His series Les Champs Magnétiques sets surrealist imagery in 1920s Paris — created in direct dialogue between the artist and an algorithm, where historical Surrealism meets Artificial Intelligence.
A contemporary painter based in Hangzhou with over two decades of continuous practice, drawing from classical Chinese traditions of the Han, Tang, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Animals — fish, horses, chickens — recur as projections of inner states rather than symbols. Works held at Today Art Museum Beijing and Duolun Museum of Modern Art Shanghai.
A visual artist based in California working across painting, printmaking, and mixed media. Her multilayered surfaces explore the unstable processes by which meaning is formed, obscured, or withheld — figures briefly appearing before slipping back into texture, refusing closure.
Born and raised in Munich, her work is shaped by emotion rather than technical convention — drawn to the fragility of the moment, the complexity of human emotions, and the power of music. For her, art is alive and in constant motion, connecting people to new perspectives on the familiar.
Works with acrylic paints, natural pigments, and textured media on cotton canvas, exploring thresholds where light meets shadow and transformation quietly emerges beneath the surface. Her paintings resemble portals — atmospheric, multilayered invitations into stillness and inner reflection. Active member of the AURA.rt collective, Nuremberg.
A mixed-media artist working at the intersection of graffiti culture, expressive painting, typography, and abstract imagery. Over 20 years as a tattoo artist shape his direct, physical working method. Founder of Reinstich Tattoo & Art Studios in Nuremberg.
Studied painting at the University of Cologne; worked within Künstlerkollektiv Refugium in Cologne for over a decade. His paintings place abstract forms in conversation with expressive naturalism — pop cultural references meeting mystical and autobiographical motifs, each image encoding a deeper symbolic meaning.
Works at the boundary between photography and digital art. Her series Echo of Forms is printed on Alu-Dibond panels that create a striking 3D effect — forms that appear to float off the wall like sculptures, blurring the line between reality and imagination.
Cinematographer and photographer who has travelled the world professionally. His large-scale abstract macro photographs use extreme light conditions, speed, and movement to transform experiences in nature into abstraction — giving images an intense, pulsating brilliance that expands perception.
A photographer whose practice began in 2023 when photography became a form of therapy during the most difficult period of his life. His work examines how digital frameworks and algorithmic systems transform individual experience into data, weakening genuine human connection.
A passionate animal welfare advocate whose pyrography artworks are sold entirely in support of his dog welfare project Hundeparadies Dietmar Schnell in Zella-Mehlis. Every piece sold goes directly to the care, medical treatment, and rehoming of rescued dogs. His presence at BASEART carried a clear message: art can be a direct act of compassion.
Works with acrylic, oil, spray paint, plaster, bitumen, and thinner. Bitumen is at the centre of his practice — its deep black and mirror-like reflection creating works that shift with light and viewing angle. His paintings make visible inner states of pain, doubt, and endurance that are easily overlooked in everyday life.
Photographer, curator, and the woman behind Basement16. She has led JugendArtGalerie in Cologne since 1997 and built l'art privé as a platform for private art exchange since 2015. For her, the pure and unmanipulated image is where truth lives — and Basement16 is her space, filled with art that matters.
Interdisciplinary artist, painter, author, musician, and performance artist with over 180 exhibitions worldwide — including the National Museum of China, National Museum of Contemporary Art Jiaxing, and Carrousel du Louvre, Paris. London Art Biennale Award 2025 winner. Represented in collections at MAERSK Denmark and multiple national museums in China.
The youngest artist in Edition I, her series Before Words is rooted in an abstract visual language shaped by a strong attraction to nature and animals. Each piece reaches its end through a firm internal judgment rather than external guidance. Abstraction, it turns out, needs no age. She was two and a half years old when she made them.