2026 Basel Social Club: Liang Hao
BANK is pleased to announce that works by Liang Hao will be presented at Basel Social Club 2026, on view from June 14 to 20. This year’s edition takes “Office” as its theme and is housed in a vacant office building near Basel’s main railway station. As one of the most anticipated independent projects during Art Basel week, Basel Social Club is known for subverting the traditional art fair model.
Liang Hao introduces his restrained and precise brushwork into the “Office” context. The presentation features a pair of paintings of the office building at Peter Merian-Strasse 34, continuing his ongoing interest in modernist architecture. Built in the early 1960s, the building is a prime example of post‑war modernism in Basel. Its design realizes Le Corbusier’s concept of the “open floor plan,” embodying an era’s faith in efficiency and progress. Liang Hao’s depiction, while seemingly faithful, draws a stark contrast between smooth façades and deep shadows. What emerges is a seductive fable — a warning that our faith in efficiency has ultimately led to the absence of the human figure itself.
As digitalization and AI reshape how we work, Liang Hao’s recurring motif of the “hand” becomes a meditation on the condition of the body. Whether it is the large hands confronting each other across a mirrored table in By the Hand (2025), or the fingers gently rubbing ash in Incense Maker (2026), the white shirt’s folds extend the canvas space, serving as a metaphor for the body’s predicament. These gestures stand in quiet defiance of the strange realities reflected on the painting’s surface.
