Earthly Paradise: Nature Reimagined at Art Basel Paris 2026

At Art Basel Paris 2026, the UBS Salon will present Earthly Paradise: Nature Reimagined, a selection of works from the UBS Art Collection that explores the enduring relationship between art and the natural world. Bringing together artists from different generations, geographies and disciplines, the presentation considers how contemporary artists continue to look to landscape as a source of inspiration, reflection and renewal. Rather than depicting nature as a fixed reality, these artists transform it into a space where memory, imagination and experience converge.

For millennia, mountains, forests, skies and bodies of water have served as powerful artistic motifs through which people have sought to understand themselves and the world around them. The artists represented in Earthly Paradise: Nature Reimagined extend this tradition while offering distinctly contemporary perspectives, revealing the natural world as a place of contemplation, belonging and transformation.

Many of the works on display approach nature as a landscape of memory and emotion. The late Etel Adnan's luminous paintings distil her beloved Mount Tamalpais into bold fields of color, reducing mountain, horizon and sun to their simplest forms. Created from memory rather than direct observation, these intimate works demonstrate how landscape can become inseparable from personal experience.

A similarly personal relationship with nature emerges in Raqib Shaw's Harvest Moon (2020). Drawing inspiration from Sylvia Plath's poem Among the Narcissi, Shaw places himself within a fantastical landscape informed by memories of Kashmir and reflections on loss, healing and resilience. Richly detailed and deeply autobiographical, the work transforms the landscape into an emotional theater where recollection and imagination combine.

Nature also serves as a catalyst for artistic invention. In Ishita Chakraborty's Where The Wild Things Roam XXXX, Cactus (2026), botanical forms become vessels for storytelling, memory and cultural identity. By incorporating saree fabric into the painted surface, Chakraborty layers personal and collective histories into an imagined landscape that feels both deeply rooted and dreamlike.

This spirit of world-building is echoed in Hayal Pozanti’s A Little Sleep, A Little Slumber (2026), whose organic composition hoversbetween abstraction and representation. Inspired in part by the natural environment surrounding her Vermont home, Pozanti’s fluid forms suggest cresting waves, celestial bodies and living organisms. Rather than depicting a specific location, the work evokes a landscape that feels simultaneously familiar and otherworldly.

The trees depicted in Nicolas Party's watercolors similarly transcend direct observation. Through saturated color and stylized forms, Les cyprès, Les arbres, Deux arbres and Les pins (2010) reinvent familiar natural motifs into poetic protagonists. Suspended between figuration and abstraction, these solitary trees become symbols of resilience, transformation and the passage of time.

Elsewhere, artists invite viewers into entirely imagined environments. Sol Calero's La segunda ventana (2023) draws inspiration from nineteenth-century panoramic paintings to create a vivid landscape beyond the frame. Neither entirely real nor entirely fictional, the work evokes distant places, aspirations and memories, reminding us of landscape's capacity to transport us beyond immediate experience.

Andi Fischer likewise approaches nature through intuition rather than description. In KAKADU ERWARTET NAHRUNG (2026), expressive marks and shifting forms evoke vitality, movement and anticipation. The painting encourages viewers to navigate their own associations, underscoring the subjective nature of perception.

Running throughout the presentation is a broader consideration of nature as an interconnected system that extends beyond human experience. In Marguerite Humeau’s Where The Holder of Wasp Venom was born (study for meys) (2023), the artist imagines a future ecosystem inhabited by highly socialized creatures whose collective activities shape the terrain itself. Combining scientific inquiry with mythology and imaginative reconstruction, Humeau challenges conventional understandings of intelligence, consciousness and the boundaries between individual organisms and larger living networks.

Jennifer Guidi approaches interconnectedness from a more spiritual perspective. In Rainbow Orb 2 (2023), concentric bands of radiant color expand outward from a central point, evoking celestial bodies, mandalas and meditative states. Through the interaction of pigment, texture and reflected light, Guidi creates an immersive experience that encourages contemplation and connection.

Julian Charrière's An Invitation to Disappear – Kotawaringin (2018) foregrounds the environmental realities shaping landscapes today. Created during fieldwork in Indonesia, the work reflects the artist's sustained exploration of ecological transformation and human impact on the earth. Through mist, light and atmospheric ambiguity, Charrière presents nature not as a passive backdrop but as a site where environmental, political and historical forces intersect.

At a moment when our relationship with the environment is increasingly shaped by both urgency and uncertainty, these artists remind us that landscapes are more than places we inhabit. They are places we remember, dream about and continually reinvent. Earthly Paradise: Nature Reimagined invites viewers to consider the natural world not only as a source of beauty, but also as a space of reflection, connection and possibility.