The Open Crate

22/06/2026

Summer is here ☀️🌊

In ‘Le Mook #10’, made for Pl***oy France, Fall/Winter 2022–2023, Julien Boudet captures an exuberant leap above the waters of Sète, France.

Rooted in the light and visual culture of the Mediterranean, Boudet’s practice draws on sport, hip-hop, and advertising to explore the circulation of images, objects, and desire. He transforms the tensions between authenticity and imitation, luxury and utility, into a distinctive visual language.

19/06/2026

This interior by Kulthome Architecture & Interior brings together a rich interplay of texture, light, and colour. Deep burgundy, warm walnut, and golden tones create a sense of warmth and depth throughout the space. The result is an atmosphere that feels intimate, contemplative, and quietly inviting.

18/06/2026

• Sang Woo Kim | Closer 030, 2026

Currently on view at Herald St for Art Basel

“Not revealing my entirety is also a way to keep a part of me to myself. Painting self-portraits is vulnerable, it’s very exposing, but it’s also a way to face my insecurities and work through them.”

김상우 Sang Woo Kim ’s practice explores identity, perception, and the complexities of cultural belonging. Working across painting and pigment-transfer processes, Kim creates intimate, often fragmented self-portraits that examine the experience of being seen, scrutinized, and defined through external narratives.

Born in Seoul and raised in the United Kingdom, his work is informed by a lifelong negotiation between Korean and British cultural identities, as well as his experiences of racialization, representation, and self-image.

17/06/2026

It’s Basel art week, and our first stop is Fondation Beyeler , seen through the lens of GIO, founder of Hatch Gallery .

The foundation presents a major exhibition dedicated to Pierre Huyghe, bringing together new site-specific works that immerse visitors in a world where fiction and reality converge. Running concurrently, ‘Various Signs’ presents works from the foundation’s collection, revealing unexpected connections between artists, generations, and artistic perspectives.

1. Andy Warhol | Self-Portrait, 1967 & Felix Gonzalez-Torres | Untitled (For New York), 1992
2. Pierre Huyghe
3. Pablo Picasso | Femme (époque des demoiselles d’Avignon), 1907
4. Ellsworth Kelly | White Ring, 1963
5. Joan Miró | Peinture, 1930 (detail)
6. Joan Miró | Peinture, 1930
7. Pierre Huyghe
8. Pablo Picasso | La femme qui pleure, 1937
9. Picasso | L’Enlèvement des Sabines, 1962
10. Piet Mondrian | Tableau No. I, 1920/1921-1925
11. Rudolf Stingel | Untitled (After Sam), 2006
12. Claude Monet | Nymphéas, 1916–1919
13. Piet Mondrian | Composition No. VI (Blue Façade), 1914
14. Pierre Huyghe
15. Georg Baselitz | The Heroes
16. Pierre Huyghe

16/06/2026

• Idris Khan | The Sky of Hope

On view at the Obama Presidential Center starting June 19

is among a group of internationally renowned artists commissioned by the Obama Foundation to create site-specific works for the Obama Presidential Center’s landmark campus-wide art programme.

Khan’s commission, Sky of Hope, is an immersive painting created for the Museum’s contemplative Sky Room. Spanning the room’s conical ceiling, the work is composed of thousands of hand-stamped words drawn from President Obama’s Selma speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma, Alabama. Echoing the same text permanently sculpted onto the Museum’s exterior façade, the words radiate from the apex of the ceiling, creating a contemplative environment that invites visitors to reflect on democracy, resilience, and the enduring power of the public voice.

15/06/2026

• Baume & Mercier | Sh**un 5136.018.3

This Baume & Mercier watch is a rare and distinctive timepiece, nicknamed the ‘Sh**un’ for its samurai armor-inspired design. It embodies the bold, angular aesthetic that defined design in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Combining a slim profile, reliable movement, and an integrated bracelet design, the Sh**un offers a compelling blend of character, everyday wearability, and vintage appeal.

Image courtesy of VINTAGE WATCH

&Mercier **un

12/06/2026

11/06/2026

• Joseph Yaeger | Suffering is the end of suffering, 2026

To be exhibited at Gladstone Gallery for Art Basel Basel

“All paintings are in their own way accusations and confessions.”

Joseph Yaeger’s practice explores the instability of contemporary cultural memory and the shifting status of images within today’s visual culture. His paintings often feel simultaneously familiar and unplaceable, generating an uncanny sense of déjà vu.

Drawing from an intuitive archive of found imagery, his cropped, cinematic compositions probe perception, memory, and the quiet psychological tension embedded in looking, while questioning how images are consumed, desired, and circulated.

10/06/2026

• Basel Art Guide

Basel in June doesn’t really follow a schedule, it layers itself instead. You arrive for Art Basel, but it quickly expands into parallel fairs, openings, and off-site projects unfolding all across the city.