Vernissage - So Fierce A Dancing & Five Bathers

​So Fierce a Dancing
One-day pop-up in Basel - Drawings by John Brooks

​Inspired by Hermann Hesse’s poem A Swarm of Gnats, this new body of work explores summer, pleasure, and queer time.

​John Brooks presents a series of intimate drawings made from photos, memories, and found images - bathers, floating bodies, neon light. The Rhine becomes both a site of beauty and a portal through time.

​With nods to Hesse, Le Corbusier, Ursula Andress, Robert Walser & more, these drawings shimmer with movement and desire - fleeting, tender, and fierce.

​Five Bathers
One-day pop-up in Basel - Drawings by Katya Labowe-Stoll

​In Five Bathers, Katya Labowe-Stoll presents five intimate works on paper, each depicting a solitary figure adrift in water and thought. Rendered in graphite and colored pencil, her bathers blur the line between body and current, between physical presence and emotional undercurrent.

​Exhibited just steps from the Rhine, the series echoes Basel’s own riverside rituals while drawing from a broader art-historical lineage - from Cézanne and Matisse to the singular, instantly recognizable style of contemporary figures like Yoshitomo Nara.

​These bathers are characters: bending low to cradle something unseen, folding inward to listen to the body’s private tide, or floating in murky depths ringed by ghostly forms. Together, they form a loose narrative where water is not just a setting but a state of mind - cleansing, distorting, holding, and releasing.

​Presented by Sabbatikal, an art gallery based in Los Angeles, California, owned an operated by Sacha H Cohen. Special thanks to Vero Schmid and Vero's Kunst & Rahmen for collaborating on this special project.