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Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.
The output of the artist Steve McQueen (b. 1969) is so varied that there need not be a throughline that runs through his oeuvre, and I’m not certain that one does exist. However, when I think about his work, I remember all the times he seemed to draw my attention directly to exactly where he wanted it. Static (2009) takes the viewer in a helicopter circling the Statue of Liberty, showing you each of its features so that you must appreciate it as a sculpture, which we don’t tend to do. Seeing Shame (2011) in the theater, I remember watching the corner of Carey Mulligan’s eye just as a tear welled in it and wondering how he did that.
One of his latest offerings, Bass (2024), has demonstrated his purest control of my perception yet. The work is both simpler and more complicated than anything involving a helicopter or an A-lister, consisting of lights that shift their color and tone as they fill an entire space, amid an original score that is full of a subtle bass. The composition is far less techno rave than you might imagine from the images and “emerged in collaboration with an intergenerational group of musicians from the Black diaspora under the direction of McQueen along with the renowned bassist Marcus Miller, who brought in several other acclaimed musicians: Meshell Ndegeocello and Aston Barrett Jr. (both on electric bass), Mamadou Kouyaté (on ngoni, a traditional West African string instrument) and Laura-Simone Martin (on upright acoustic bass),” per the press materials.
Despite living in New York City, I missed the work when it debuted at Dia Beacon because it somehow made more sense for me to catch it in Basel—it’s been that kind of year. In Beacon, it was in the sprawling basement of that former factory. At the Schaulager, the work was not contained on one floor, taking advantage of over 1,000 LED tubes temporarily installed in the place of the lightly brutal interior of the Herzog & de Meuron-designed space. These lights shift subtly between almost every color of the visible light spectrum, breathing in tune with the music, with such a flow that you will barely notice going from deep red to teal.
McQueen has said that he sought “oceanic frequencies” for the composition, so it’s not original to say that it feels like you’re swimming underwater. Instead, I’ll say it feels like you’re walking around underwater, which is far stranger. I didn’t experience the Beacon iteration, but the effect of inundation must have been stronger in Switzerland, because it featured multiple floors. You felt like you were on the seabed, with leagues above you. Light doesn’t behave that way when you’re that deep down with scuba gear, but you can still feel the currents, and those sensations were recreated by the synchronicity between the music and all the LEDs changing color at the same time.
The perfection of this coordination would almost be enough to make you paranoid, were it not so soothing. This unexpected offering from McQueen shows that he’s still challenging himself and still finding new ways to get into our heads.
Steve McQueen’s Bass is on view at the Laurenz Foundation, Schaulager Basel, through November 16, 2025.
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Dan Duray
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