John Opera at Basel Art Fair

The third annual edition of June Art Fair is taking place during Basel Art Week from September 20-26, 2021 in Hall 4.1 of Messe Basel.

Established in 2019, the inaugural edition was set inside a concrete bunker transformed into an exhibition space by Pritzker Prize winning  architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.

An alternative to a conventional art fair viewing experience, the fair is gallery led and distinguished by a highly-selective, intergenerational group of participants presenting projects in an open format more akin to a meticulously curated, collaborative, public exhibition. 

A modest scale and convenient site located in close proximity to Messeplatz and Art Basel are notable attributes. This year’s edition marks the fair’s physical return to Basel after last year’s Special Online Edition presented on Hauserwirth.com in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth and ArtReview.

Founded as an independent project by galleries VI, VII (Oslo) and Christian  Andersen, (Copenhagen) the fair was conceived as a platform to promote the work of emerging artists and to encourage the discovery of  under-recognized figures.

John Opera blurs the line between painting and photography in concept and appearance, while mirroring the phenomena of nature. Opera utilizes light produced from his own invented systems rather than a lens-based device, creating layered hallucinations from photographic technology. His work does not depict a representational image, rather a result of invented psychedelia, suggesting the medium is perhaps more miraculous than what it can capture.