Art|Basel

Basel


16.06.16 – 19.06.16

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PRESS RELEASE

Sofia Hultén at Art Basel | Feature

RaebervonStenglin
Hall 2.1., Booth T3
June 16th – June 19th 2016

At Art Basel | Feature 2016 RaebervonStenglin presents ‘Speculative Fiction’, a new installation by the Berlin-based artist Sofia Hultén. Speculative fiction is a genre of science fiction, asking the question ‘what if?’. What if we had a time machine, what if we could see the fourth dimension? Sofia Hulténs presentation brings these questions down to earth casting used object with backstories in new sculptural narratives.

Hultén’s materials are utilitarian, relating to a commonplace world as personal as it is pervasive. For ‘Speculative Fiction’ street posts, bicycle frames, locks and paint are combined to form several versions of possible histories in which the normal sequence of events is scrambled. In one version, the bicycle frame is connected around the post, but the lock loosely chained on top of it. In another, paint from the post is applied to the part of the bicycle frame in front of it, as though it were already there when the post was painted.

A video piece continues the theme, in ‘Nonsequences’ causality is turned on its head as variations on a sequence of events around eating and discarding an apple are played out. ‘Line with Complications’ sees old lifting slings, such as would be used for skips and other heavy loads, contorted into extremely elegant knots articulating the mathematical study of topology. In addition, a photographic series will be presented, ‘Trucking’ from 2014 shows the artist walking the streets of Berlin, where she swaps her trainers for a pair of discarded one’s. Exchanging personal objects or material through found and similar ones, adds another dimenstion of Hultén’s artistic practice and exemplifies her approach to the possibilities of closed circuits.

Such apparently deviant causality creates situations in which, as the critic Mark Prince has noted, 'narrative realism is parodied, then baffled, through its reshuffling'. In doing so, Hultén creates science fiction scenarios and temporal riddles casting the material world as an extension of the lived-in mind. The matter-of-factness of redundant industrial objects is imbued with the infinite possibilities of quantum physics, and the glamourless dreariness of discarded items found in the street is subverted by the deadpan slapstick with which the artist transforms them and the elegance of their formal solutions, suggesting that what is presented — however unlikely — at some point in time is inevitable.

Sofia Hultén was born in 1972 in Sweden. She lives and works in Berlin since 1997. Her recent solo exhibitions include 'Entropy High', i8 Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland (2016); 'Truckin'’, Daniel Marzona, Berlin, Germany and ’When Lines are Time', Espai 13, Miro Foundation, Barcelona, Spain (both 2015); 'Matter is Plastic in the Face of Mind', Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, Sweden and ’I Used To, I Still Do, but I Used To Too', RaebervonStenglin, Zürich, Switzerland (both 2014); 'How did it get so late so soon', Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany and ’If You Never Did You Should', Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin, Germany (both 2013); 'Sofia Hultén and Nina Canell', Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2013); 'Statik Elastik', Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany and 'One in Ten', Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, Sweden (both 2012) and 'PRESSURE DROP', RaebervonStenglin, Zürich, Switzerland (2011).

Group shows include 'The Secret Life of Images', Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany (2016); ’Momentum 8 – Tunnel Vision', 8th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway (2015); 'Magnetic Leakage Fluxes. An international group exhibition', The Brno House of Arts, Brno, Czechia (2015); '5 Years RaebervonStenglin', RaebervonStenglin, Zürich, Switzerland (2015); ’New Ways of Doing Nothing’, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria and 'Almost Something, Not Quite Nothing‘, Ambach & Rice, Los Angeles, USA (both 2014); 'The World Turned Upside Down – Buster Keaton, Sculpture and the Absurd', Mead Gallery Warwick, Warwick, UK and 'Sweet Bitter Symphony’, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen, Germany (both 2013).

Sofia Hultén was the recipient of the 'Moderna Museets Vänners Skulpturpris 2011', Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2011).

 

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Art | Basel Parcours with Andrew Dadson

Lichthof
Bau- und Verkehrsdepartement Basel-Stadt Münsterplatz 11, CH-4001 Basel
June 16th – 19th 2016

Specially conceived for Art|Parcours «Black Plant Sunset» continues Andrew Dadson’s practice of creating paint-based interventions on the landscape. This project will fill a room with plants painted black and illuminated by industrial ultraviolet grow lights that provide the artificial means for the plants to grow. Acting as an artificial sun the ultraviolet lights infuse the plants’ silhouette with a complex range of impressionistic hues.
 

The installation calls attention to several different kinds of looking, including those that can only happen over long periods of time. As the plants grow over the course of the exhibition, green emerges from beneath the black paint, a remin- der that natural forces beyond our control are ultimately responsible for what we see and how we see it. Filling the room with plants becomes a reminder of the landscape that once stood in place of the building, the temporary intervention of the paint becomes a metaphor for a landscape in constant flux.

Andrew Dadson was born in 1980. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Islands’, Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; ‘Pain- ting (Organic)’, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; and ‘Over the Sun’, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver B.C. (all 2015). He first showed at RaebervonStenglin in 2013 with ‘Paint Pour’. Selected group exhibitions include ’De Pictura 3’, Metropolitan Art Society, Beirut; ‘Art and the City’ Zürich (both 2015); ‘The go between’, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (2014); ’Again and again and again’, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancou- ver B.C. (2012); ‘Without You I’m Nothing’, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago (2011); and ‘Art Unlimited’, Art Basel, Basel (2014 and 2010). Dadson’s work can be seen in the 2016 edition of Parcours, Art Basel, Basel, and next year a solo exhibition of his work will be on display at Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver B.C. Dadson lives and works in Vancouver, B.C.


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