Figurines & Statuettes
by HOBO international
Basel Social Club - Room 1. B. 9
14. June – 20. June 2026
For this year’s Basel Social Club, HOBO International - curated by Cyril Tyrone Hübscher and Theodor Nymark - brings together thirteen artists across generations, practices, and premises, that all consider the figurine as a form to inspect.
The figurine and the statuette occupy a strong and layered position in art history and contemporary culture: workers’ monuments, office art in the vein of Jeff Koons, Renoir’s ballet dancers, the Oscar statuette, Labubus, busts, and the mannequin (from the Flemish for “little man”). Questions of figuration, craftsmanship, commerce, identity, and power are all becoming actors participating in this little theater unfolding on the big stage. Like employees and colleagues, they occupy a single black oval podium, which borrows its form from the conference tables found in office boardrooms and other places of power.
The exhibition Figurines & Statuettes includes artworks by Lorin Brockhaus, Elizabeth Englander, Leonard Fendler-Moser, Gina Fischli, Manuel Graf, Bella Henri, Oscar Kargruber, Tarik Kentouche, Günther Möbius, Eva Noeske, Phung-Tien Phan, Clara Schmidt, and Peter Wächtler.
