BASEART 2026 — Edition I

13 March – 29 March 2026 · Basement 16, Bensberg

Curated by CROW · Hosted by Marlis Sauer

Some art fairs last three days. BASEART lasts seventeen.

Edition I brought together 26 artists from across three continents — Mongolia, China, Iran, Russia, Denmark, France, Germany, Serbia, and the United States — inside 500 square metres of committed, living space at Basement 16 in Bensberg. The opening on 13 March 2026 was covered by Kölner Stadtanzeiger, which described the evening as the moment "die Weltenseele Halt macht in Bensberg" — the world soul stops in Bensberg.

But BASEART was never designed simply to be seen. It was designed to connect. With an established collector network built over years, works began finding their homes from opening night. This is what separates BASEART from the market as usual.

The Artists of Edition I

Munkh-Erdene Munkhzorig carried the spirit of the Mongolian steppe into his sculptures of metal, wood, and clay — works that explore the invisible connection between humans and nature, guided by patience, resilience, and respect for natural growth.

Sara Ashrafi, whose painting Inner Child is held in the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and who was awarded the Harvard University Gala Art Prize in 2019, brought colour, myth, and decades of international exhibition history from Iran.

Igor Sacharow-Ross — expelled from the USSR in 1978 after staging the country's first underground performances — brought decades of exile, resistance, and molecular wonder to the walls. He has held professorships at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the University of Siegen.

Li Qianyu, Associate Director of the Sculpture Department at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts, contributor to the China Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, and winner of the Grand Prize at the Shanghai Dong'an Riverside Public Art International Competition, presented works that move between monument and meditation.

Reinhardt Roy — Honorary Member of the Szechenyi Academy of Literature and Arts Budapest, recipient of the Daniel-Henry-Kahnweiler Award, and collaborator with architects Oscar Niemeyer and Kenneth King — brought his signature dot-grid paintings and sculptures that move beyond two-dimensionality into the metaphysical and the meditative.

pain-T, the internationally known actor Markus Gertken, showed six new works from his Palagonism series — self-portraits captured through the reflection of mirrored sunglasses, created after a journey to the Villa Palagonia in Sicily, a place Goethe once called the wildest thing he had ever seen.

Livia Küffner, an oncologist and surgeon by profession and recipient of the First Prize at the Artist of Europe Award in Florence in 2024, with exhibitions in New York, Paris, London, and Madrid, brought large-format photography that constantly asks the same question: what connects us as human beings.

Shan He — conceptual photographer, doctoral researcher investigating the relationship between photography and emotion, and founder of The Light Archive, a research-based platform for therapeutic photography. Member of BBK Germany and the IAA, with exhibitions spanning Miami Art Week, Berlin, London, Shanghai, Budapest, Beijing, and Tokyo.

Qi Wei Zhang — Dr. phil. from the Kunstakademie Münster, Director of the Center for International Art Exchange at Ningbo City College, and lecturer at HBK Essen and the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts — presented his CMYK series, placing calligraphic brushstrokes in dialogue with the mechanical logic of the printing industry.

Eline Østergaard, trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture and Design and with experience in scenography and sculpture in Berlin, showed paintings that live in the tension between the raw and the poetic — dark surfaces that function as both resistance and holding space.

Pierre Piton, who began his career as an investigative officer at the Central Laboratory of the Gendarmerie before dedicating himself entirely to art from 2022, and co-founder of the Artists' Collective of the Pays de Saint-Malo, brought photography that seeks to provoke emotion and intimate reflection through rare light and celestial moments.

Thomas Michel, active internationally since 1991 with exhibitions in Italy, Cuba, China, and major German art fairs, presented his series Les Champs Magnétiques — surrealist works set in the atmosphere of 1920s Paris, created in direct dialogue between the artist and an algorithm.

Danjing Li, a painter with over two decades of continuous practice whose works have entered the Today Art Museum Beijing, Duolun Museum of Modern Art Shanghai, and the Tokyo Art Fair, brought paintings in which animals — fish, horses, chickens — function not as symbols but as projections of inner states, desire, and self-awareness.

Mengqi Liu, a visual artist based in California working across painting, printmaking, and mixed media, created multilayered surfaces where figures briefly appear before slipping back into the texture — a visual language built from fragments, shifting memories, and unresolved remnants.

Samantha Noel, born and raised in Munich, makes work shaped entirely by emotion — drawn to the fragility of the moment, the complexity of human feelings, and the power of music. For her, art is alive and in constant motion.

Shelly Thanner (born 1991, Nuremberg), member of the AURA.rt collective, works with acrylic paints, natural pigments, and textured media on cotton canvas. Her paintings resemble portals — atmospheric, multilayered invitations into stillness, grounding, and inner reflection.

Kim C. Griesch (born 1976, Nuremberg), founder of Reinstich Tattoo & Art Studios, brings over 20 years of tattooing into his mixed-media practice — working at the intersection of graffiti culture, expressive painting, typography, and abstraction, fusing urban energy with emotional depth.

Nikolas Sievert (born 1978, Bielefeld), studied painting at the University of Cologne and worked for over a decade within the Künstlerkollektiv Refugium in Cologne. His paintings place abstract forms in conversation with expressive naturalism — pop cultural references meeting mystical and autobiographical motifs.

Beba Ilic, born in Hagen with roots in Serbia and Greece, 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.

Patrick Brandt, based in Essen, is a cinematographer and photographer who has travelled the world professionally. His large-scale abstract macro photographs use extreme light conditions, speed, and movement to give images an intense, pulsating brilliance — transforming experiences in nature into abstraction that expands perception.

Wenzhou Wu, a Chinese photographer whose practice began during the most difficult period of his life in 2023, when photography became a form of therapy. His work explores the identity crisis of contemporary youth — examining how digital frameworks and algorithmic systems transform individual experience, weakening genuine human connection.

Bruce, born 1970 in Thuringia, is a passionate animal welfare advocate whose pyrography artworks are sold entirely in support of his dog welfare project Hundeparadies Dietmar Schnell. Every piece sold goes directly to the care, medical treatment, and rehoming of dogs rescued from difficult circumstances. His presence at BASEART carried a clear message: art can be a direct act of compassion.

Enrico Köhler-Frontzek 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 the inner, often invisible states of pain, doubt, and endurance — quiet struggles given a powerful voice on canvas.

Marlis Sauer — photographer, curator, and the woman behind Basement 16 — has led JugendArtGalerie in Cologne since 1997 and has built l'art privé as a platform for private art exchange since 2015. For her, the pure and unmanipulated image is where truth lives. Basement 16 is her space, and she fills it with art that matters.

Tali He presented Before Words — a series of abstract works rooted in movement, nature, animals, colour, and gesture. Each piece reached its end not through external guidance but through a firm, decisive internal judgment. Tali He was two and a half years old when she made them. She is the youngest artist in Edition I — and one of its most quietly powerful voices. Abstraction, it turns out, needs no age.

The Curator

CROW — German artist, painter, author, musician, and performance artist, with over 180 exhibitions worldwide including the National Museum China, the National Museum of Contemporary Art Jiaxing, and the Carrousel du Louvre Paris. Winner of the London Art Biennale Award 2025. Honoured as Artist of the Year in China in 2019. Works held in the collections of MAERSK Denmark, Guilin Art Museum, and the National Art Museum of Contemporary Art. Founder of Artworx Academy and trained art therapist.

He curated Edition I with a single intention:

"We want to offer something here for everyone." — Holger Crow, Curator, BASEART 2026

As featured in Kölner Stadtanzeiger, 13 March 2026

Edition II is coming.

Follow us. The world keeps showing up.