Art Basel Diary: The Universe's First Interdimensional Artist

The Art Newspaper’s recent Art Basel diary highlights several intriguing events and artworks from the 2026 fair. One standout is the presence of Soff, a self-described “interdimensional artist” from the Soff Multiverse, who is developing a game machine that allows users to create their own “post-human body.” This concept aligns with the fair’s Zero 10 section, dedicated to digital art, and prompts reflection on the future of human identity and digital existence.

The diary also notes tributes to the late David Hockney, with attendees honoring his legacy through personal gestures, such as wearing badges bearing his maxim “End bossiness soon.” Additionally, the Basel Social Club offers unique experiences like Hotbling2Go’s live tooth gem applications, adding a literal sparkle to fairgoers’ smiles. These events underscore the fair’s blend of artistic homage and contemporary cultural trends.

The themes of post-humanism, homage, and ethereal experiences explored in the diary resonate with several digital artworks. Mario Klingemann’s “ARE YOU POST?” delves into the concept of the “post-artist” in the digital age, questioning the evolution of artistic identity. This mirrors Soff’s exploration of post-human bodies, both challenging traditional notions of self and creativity.

Estelle Flores’s “The Horse Stayed Quiet” employs glitch art to transform natural imagery into an ethereal, textured experience. This manipulation of reality parallels the fading portraits of Princess Diana by Angharad Williams, both invoking a sense of impermanence and the ephemeral nature of existence.

Anna Malina’s “△” combines glitch aesthetics with digital collage, creating fragmented yet cohesive visuals. The recurring crescent moons and starburst shapes evoke cosmic phenomena, aligning with the interdimensional themes presented by Soff. Both works challenge perceptions of reality and identity through digital manipulation.

Alex May’s “Ferris Wheel in the Rain” presents a distorted, melancholic urban landscape, reflecting on themes of decay and impermanence. This aligns with the diary’s mention of fading images of Princess Diana, both exploring the passage of time and the transient nature of human constructs.

Frederik De Wilde’s “The_Unstable_Portrait_2” critiques the reliability of images in the age of artificial intelligence, highlighting the instability of perception. This concept resonates with the diary’s exploration of post-humanism and digital identity, questioning the boundaries between human and machine, reality and simulation.

These artworks, like the events at Art Basel, engage with contemporary themes of identity, transformation, and the ethereal, offering a digital reflection on the evolving human experience.

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References

Source Article

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/06/18/art-basel-diary-the-universes-first-interdimensional-artist-hockney-homages-and-natty-gnashers

Artworks

1. “ARE YOU POST?” by Mario Klingemann
   

   
   “Am I post? No idea, to be honest. According to Anika Meier, we are in the age of the post-artist, but since her article in Spike #87 did not mention my name, I can t say if I would make the list. So I try to express my confusion in this vibe-coded song and video, in a continuation of my grievance songs series. Posted. Over and out.” – Mario Klingemann You ve got the studio, you ve got the grant You ve got the statement, you ve got the stance You ve got the gallerist, you ve got the show But are you post? You read the theory, you did the work You ve been emerging for a while Intentionality? A Triviality. But are you post? If you re not post, then you have lost so better post, post, post, post, post, post! You went conceptual, you went sincere You went ironic, you disappeared You came back quiet, you came back loud But are you post? You made the thing, you broke the thing You named the thing, you sold the thing You stood beside it for the photograph But are you post? Hans-Ulrich knows your name But he never mentions it Does that make you post or what? On second thought there is a thing that might worry you a bit: He is best friends with your pal Mat If you re not post, then you have lost so better post, post, post, post, post, post! You post at midnight, you post at noon You post the studio, you post the room You post the coffee, you post the doubt But are you post? Just keep on posting long enough And leave your marks on every wall The present might stay oblivious But you ll be post post-posthumous!

2. “The Horse Stayed Quiet” by Estelle Flores
   

   

   
   Red Dead Redemption 2 + Hydra Synth

3. "△" by Anna Malina
   

   

   
   {2026} :: footage from Конёк-Горбунок {1941} and Nachtschatten {1972}, digital collage, faulty inkjet print, GIMP selection tool animation ~

4. “vendedor de balões” by IvnHgo
   

   

   
   post-photography experiments in virtual reality using lowpoly and zfighting glitches

5. “Ferris Wheel in the Rain” by Alex May
   

   

   
   An abandoned Ferris wheel in the rain. Urgench, Uzbekistan. Post-photography using bespoke software.

6. “The_Unstable_Portrait_2” by Frederik De Wilde
   

   

   
   Error C’est La Vie _ The Incredible Sodomy of Marcel DuchAIm by Frederik De Wilde In the contemporary regime of artificial intelligence, the image can no longer be trusted to function as evidence. Its historical grounding in indexicality — once secured by photography and lens-based capture — has begun to dissolve under the pressures of synthetic production. Images are no longer primarily taken from the world; they are assembled from statistical inference, generated through models trained on the residual archives of human visual culture. What circulates today is not truth, but plausibility: a computationally negotiated likeness of reality. Within this condition, Error C’est La Vie _ The Incredible Sodomy of Marcel DuchAIm operates as both symptom and critique. Frederik De Wilde situates the work at the unstable intersection of generative systems, machine vision, and computational aesthetics, where perception itself becomes a contested field. The NFT series does not present fixed images in the traditional sense, but rather procedural events — visual outputs produced through autonomous and semi-autonomous systems that continuously mutate form, coherence, and authorship. Here, prompts, datasets, latent vectors, compression artifacts, algorithmic bias, and autonomous agents are not background infrastructure; they are the medium. The artwork emerges less as an object than as a negotiated outcome between human intention and machinic inference. Authorship is thus displaced: no longer anchored in singular creative agency, but distributed across a choreography of probabilistic operations. The artist assumes the role of system designer or conductor, staging conditions under which images appear, drift, and destabilize themselves. Crucially, these synthetic images are never solitary inventions. Each output is an aggregation of cultural residue: scraped image banks, invisible labour, encoded assumptions, proprietary architectures, and sedimented aesthetic histories. Machine learning models function as cultural unconsciousness engines — recursively reorganising collective memory into statistically coherent hallucinations. What surfaces in the image is therefore not merely representation, but the sedimentation of desire, exclusion, repetition, and systemic bias embedded in visual culture at scale. De Wilde’s work also foregrounds a deeper epistemic tension: the increasing displacement of human perception by machine-mediated visibility. As algorithmic systems determine what can be seen, amplified, or rendered legible, visual culture becomes governed by infrastructures that precede interpretation. The synthetic image no longer reflects reality; it competes with it, reorganises it, and in many cases anticipates it. Against this backdrop, the series does not ask whether images are real or false — a distinction that has become structurally inadequate. Instead, it interrogates the conditions of their emergence: Which systems author visibility? Which forms of power are embedded in synthetic perception? And what remains of authorship when imagination itself is outsourced to computational processes operating at planetary scale? Positioned between critique and speculative fiction, the work frames synthetic imagery as an epistemological rupture rather than a stylistic evolution. It destabilises inherited binaries — document and fiction, original and copy, observer and machine — replacing them with a continuous field of computational becoming. In this sense, the image no longer refers back to reality as its source.
It refers to the systems through which reality is rendered perceptible at all.

7. “D[I]eTAils” by nofaithvisuals
   

   

   
   DITA (Italian for fingers ) DETAILS A square format artwork minted for #tezsquare event 2025 No Faith / Federico Salvador 2025

8. “Art and Tongue” by Niko Princen
   

   

   
   Animated Gif, 533 x 355 px, 2 frames, 2014

9. “Undead” by martatimmer
   

   

   
   Neither dead or alive. Glitch inspired collage and compositing with AI elements. #Glitchtober2025

10. “2026-05-25” by Alex May
    

    

    
    Nothing is really delineated. The segmentation of the eye, while vital to our survival, is very misleading.

Keywords

ethereal, post-human, homage, sparkle