BASEL, Switzerland — A 98-foot surveillance tower, a reassembled Chinese train wagon with political videos projected onto the windowpanes, a 16-foot chunky self-portrait sculpture, even a hotel with 15 rooms. All of these gigantic pieces were housed in the 130,000-square-foot hall devoted to Art Unlimited, a section of Art Basel dedicated to art that cannot be shown in the regular booths.

“Nine years ago we created this space for those artists who work with large-scale pieces to have the opportunity to show their art,” the curator of the show, Simon Lamunière, said.

A total of 69 artists from 23 countries were selected (out of more than 200 candidates) to exhibit their works in Art Unlimited. Such established names as Tom Wesselmann, Carl André, Pipilotti Rist, and Michelangelo Pistoletto had their pieces placed next to lesser-known talents such as João Onofre or Andreas Fogarasi.

New York artist Jon Kessler brought a 500-square-foot installation called “The Blue Period,” in which the Columbia University professor uses primitive blue-screen technology and kinetic devices to create the overwhelming experience of being surrounded on all sides by cameras, monitors, and life-size pictures of people.

“Kessler shows all the tricks and opens the toolbox of the manipulation and media influence,” the owner of Berlin’s Arndt & Partner gallery, Matthias Arndt, said.

Art Unlimited has been around since 2000, but what made the show so appealing this year was its museum-like display, courtesy of Mr. Lamunière. The pieces were arranged in such a way that they established a dialogue with each other, allowing the visitor to follow a path from the beginning to the end.

“This year the pieces have been displayed as a pendulum, and what matters are the shapes and forms of attraction,” Mr. Lamunière said.

An example of Mr. Lamunière’s curatorial skill could be found in the display of the Swiss artists Thomas Hirschhorn and Fabrice Gygi.

Mr. Hirschhorn’s 164-foot-long installation “Hotel Democracy” is a cry against repression, for which the artist plastered the walls of miniature rooms with bloody photographs of protests from around the world.

Mr. Hirschhorn’s work interacts with Gygi’s “La Vigie.” The 98-foot surveillance tower puts out the visitor, who can’t avoid feeling the presence of an authoritarian state. His work is a strong criticism of people’s fears.

As everything else shown in Art Basel, these monumental pieces were also for sale. Mr. Kessler’s “The Blue Period” installation was on sale for $280,000. But, Mr. Arndt said, the obstacle to its appeal is not its price, but rather its intellectual complexity and the technical difficulty involved in transporting it.

“People would rather buy a 500,000-euro [$786,550] painting that is more aesthetic and appealing,” he said.

In the last decade, Italian gallery owner Lorenzo Fiaschi has seen an increase in the number of large-scale art pieces that respond to “the advances in technology.”

Mr. Arndt said he had also seen growth in the number of oversize artworks. “More and more works try to impress by size and dimensions, but the size not always matters,” he said.

“A small idea blown up on a big size does not become a big idea,” he added.

Mr. Fiaschi, who had a $2.3 million, 66-foot mirror installation for sale, said that galleries have to make a bigger effort to include large-scale pieces in their catalogs. He showed no worry about selling his work. Last Friday, he had already been contacted by three potential buyers.

“When the love of somebody for the piece is as big as the piece itself, they will find a way and a place to exhibit it,” he said.