Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel and Theater Basel are delighted to annunce '14 Rooms',a major live-art exhibition to be staged in Basel from June 14 to 23, 2014. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the exhibition will feature performative works by artists including Marina Abramovic, Allora and Calzadilla, Ed Atkins, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Damien Hirst, Otobong Nkanga, Roman Ondák, Santiago Sierra, and Xu Zhen. With an overall exhibition design by Herzog& de Meuron,'14 Rooms' is a collaboration between Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel and Theater Basel.

Curators Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, have invited 14 international artists to each activate a room, exploring the relationship between space, time and physicality with an artwork whose 'material' is a human being. Giving visitors an insight into a more performative and interactive practice, visitors will encounter a new situation within each of the 14 rooms, engaging in a diverse series of immersive and intimate experiences.

Conceived specifically for Basel, Ed Atkins, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Otobong Nkanga will create new works for the show. Alongside these world premieres, historical and rarely seen works by acclaimed artists from around the world will be brought to Basel.

'14 Rooms' will include Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla's 'Revolving Door(2011)',in which a group of dancers spontaneously form a line and begin to rotate around the room in a circular motion, sweeping up visitors as they move around the space.

In his exploration of social boundaries and socio-cultural inequalities, Santiago Sierra places a succession of war veterans, from varied past conflicts, standing facing one corner of a 5-5-meter room and instructed to only move from their post once solemnly replaced by another veteran mimicking the changing of the guard.

Damien Hirst's largely unkown early work 'Hans, Georg' (1992), consisting of a rotating cast of identical twins sitting below two of his own identical dot paintings, will be restaged at the show.

Marina Abramovic's  'Luminosity' (1997) places a performer on a bicycle seat fixed onto a wall bathed in harsh light, exploring themes of loneliness and spiritual elevation.

Roman Ondak's 'Swap' (2011) asks a performer to choose an object as they sit behind a table, and when visitors enter the room they are then able to swap the object with anything else they are willing to exchange,while the Chinese artist Xu Zhen's 'In Just a Blink of an Eye' (2005) a body floats in mid-air as if frozen, defying both time and gravity, and making the audience question reality and reflect on the work's seeming impossibility.

Artists and the curators will be attending the opening of the exhibition.

While the artists themselves are not present in these works, they instruct performers on how to act out their specifications, resulting in over 70 performers ± primarily from the Basel region - taking part in the exhibition. '14 Rooms' will be staged in Hall 3 of Messe Basel in walking distance from Messeplatz. The exhibition will open to the public ahead of Art Basel on Saturday, June 14 and will stay open until Monday, June 23, a day longer than the fair.

'14 Rooms' will be accompanied by an education program conceived and run by Fondation Beyeler.

Originally commissioned as '11 Rooms' by Manchester International Festival, the International Arts Festival RUHRTRIENNALE 2012-2014 and Manchester Art Gallery, the project was shown as '11 Rooms' at Manchester International Festival in July 2011, as '12 Rooms' at the International Arts Festival RUHRTRIENNALE 2012-2014 and as '13 Rooms' by Kaldor Public Art Projects at Pier 2/3 in Sydney's Walsh Bay in April 2013.For each edition, the artists list partially changed.

Ann-Christin Rommen, Marc Bättig and Samuel Leuenberger are the producers of the exhibition.

About Fondation Beyeler

Inaugurated in 1997 and set in an idyllic park, the museum is the work of the star architect Renzo Piano. The Fondation Beyeler owes its special appeal to its combination of a world class collection comprising 250 masterpieces of modern, contemporary and ethnographic art, fascinating architecture, beautiful natural surroundings and temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art that match the highest international standards. Current and upcoming exhibitions and cooperations: Odilon Redon, Daros Latinamerica Collection, Gerhard Richter, 14 Rooms, Alexander Calder, Gustave Courbet, Peter Doig. For further information please visit: fondationbeyeler.ch

About Art Basel

Art Basel stages the world's premier art shows for Modern and contemporary works, sited in Basel, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong. Defined by its host city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions for each edition. In addition to ambitious stands featuring leading galleries from around the world, each show's singular exhibition sectors spotlight the latest developments in the visual arts, offering visitors new ideas, new inspiration and new contacts in the art world. Art Basel's Lead Partner is UBS. For further information please visit: artbasel.com

14 Rooms Tickets

Day Ticket (return entry): CHF 18

Reduced Day Ticket for Students/Seniors: CHF 12

Groups of 10 people or more: CHF 15 per person

Tickets are available for purchase by end of April. Further details will be released in the coming month.

> via Herzog& de Meuron