Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled (Foster you’re dead), 2008, 22x17cm (Courtesy Galleria Emi Fontana, Milano) |
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 Art Basel
Jun 4-8, 2008, Basel, Switzerland |
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Art 39 Basel:
Public Art Projects
The outdoor exhibition area in front of the buildings hosting the international art show are once again scheduled to become a stage for art projects in public space. Ten works by internationally renowned artists like Dan Graham, Luca Vitone, Isa Genzken, Roxy Paine, Thomas Baumann, Conrad Shawcross, Subodh Gupta, Sol LeWitt, Tobias
Rehberger, and Ugo Rondinone will be installed there. Engaging directly with the viewer, they connect with the daily lives of passersby in ways now poetic, now surprising. Creating perspectival shifts, they turn the familiar and accustomed into a new and unexpected experience, while at the same time exploring the boundaries between art and life. This year Isteinerstrasse, the access street to halls 1 and 2 of the international art fair, is also being integrated into the exhibition concept.
The Public Art Projects platform offers fascinating insight into leading contemporary artists’ interpretation of new art in public space. By no means a traditional sculpture exhibition, Public Art Projects showcases interventions in urban space. The ten pieces featured on Exhibition Square and Isteinerstrasse will be installed site-specifically. The exhibition concept has once again been devised by experienced Basel exhibition maker Martin Schwander.
Dan Graham (Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, London) has created a new piece especially for Art 39 Basel. Rectangle Inside ¾ Cylinder belongs to the Two-Way-Mirror-Pavilion series, which the American artist has been working on since the 1980s.
As Graham puts it: «My pavilions are to be experienced from both the inside and the outside. Depending on the lighting conditions at a given moment, they can be mirrorized on the outside and thus conceal the existence of interior viewers, or equally
transparent and reflective simultaneously from inside and outside. They demonstrate to the viewers their own bodies and themselves as perceiving subjects – and also allow them to see other spectators perceiving themselves. The relation of inside to outside, because of the perceptual properties of the materials constituting the pavilion, is in constant flux, dependent upon clouds, sun and environmental features. These alterations in turn affect the perceptions of the viewers, their perceptions of themselves, of other spectators, of the landscape, the material/structure of the pavilion.»
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Isa Genzken, Rose I, 1993-1997, Stainless steel, aluminum, lacquer, height 800 cm (Courtesy David Zwirner, New York; Galerie Daniel Buchholz Köln) |
German artist Isa Genzken (David Zwirner, New York) will be presenting a monumental rose (Rose II) in front of the halls of the international art fair. The romantic symbol of the rose has been a subject in Genzken’s work since 1993. The 8-meter-high, painted steel sculpture defies, yet underlines, the fragility, elegance, and beauty ordinarily associated with the flower. An unequivocal interpretation of the work is correspondingly difficult. The sculpture can be viewed as a powerful, compelling affirmation of life, while at the same time reminding us of life’s transitoriness.
Inversion, by American concept artist Roxy Paine (*1966; Galerie Jablonka, Cologne, Berlin), also takes up the subject of nature, or more precisely the confrontation of the natural and the industrial world. The piece turns the world upside down, for the 12-meter-high tree made from 7,000 steel pipes of varying thickness is standing on its head with its roots stretching up into the air. In Inversion the artist questions the position of human beings between the world they have created and the natural world, which is beyond their control.
 MOONRISE.east, by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone (Galerie Presenhuber, Zurich), is a collection of strange, grotesque heads. The 12 aluminum sculptures painted the color of clay stand on wooden plinths; the platform on which they are presented measures approx. 15 x 28 meters and hovers a meter above the ground. The 12 masks belong to the last of Rondinone’s altogether four series titled Moonrise. Each series is named after a cardinal direction and each of the 12 masks after a month of the year. The platform is accessible via stairs at the four corners.
Gu Mo Ni Ma Da, by German artist Tobias Rehberger (Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York), references the biography of Danish- Vietnamese artist Dahn Vo. After the fall of Saigon, the family fled Vietnam in a boat that Dahn Vo’s father had built for over
one hundred refugees. Their goal was the United States. But as the boat was picked up by a Danish tanker, the Vo family ended up in Denmark. Gu Mo Ni Ma Da is a reconstruction of the boat. But Rehberger’s piece can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the millions of refugees en route every day in the Middle East, Kenya, or Sudan, or the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in the United States.
Three Monkeys, by Indian artist Subodh Gupta (Nature Morte, New Delhi, New York; Bose Pacia, New Delhi), is a sculptural group condensing images current today. The three 2.2-meterhigh bronze human heads are covered to the point of unrecognizability
by gas mask, helmet, and scarf. The gas mask, helmet, and scarf are made of the steel used for kitchen utensils in India, a material frequently employed by Gupta. Three Monkeys is a contemporary representation of a familiar subject: the three wise
monkeys of the 17th-century Nikko Toshogu shrine in Japan.
Whereas in Japan the three monkeys generally symbolize «wisely overlooking evil», in the West they tend to be interpreted in terms of «not wanting to acknowledge the existence of evil». As a result of this negative redefinition, the three monkeys are frequently used to represent a lack of moral courage. Viewers can decide for themselves whether Gupta’s work favors the Western or the Eastern interpretation.
The installation Gli occhi di Segantini, by Italian artist Luca Vitone (Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan), is both a monument and an homage to the painter Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899), who became famous for his representation of the mountains and
mountain-dwellers of the Swiss Engadine. Gli occhi di Segantini is a 1:1 reproduction of the studio Segantini built behind his house in the Engadine, in Maloja, to create a monumental wall painting. Vitone’s installation, which, like Segantini’s studio, is
made of wood, is open to viewers. Inside, an abstract drawing of the mountain silhouette of the Engadine recalls Segantini’s project. Luca Vitone’s work is a monument to the artist’s failure, for Segantini was never to complete his monumental painting.
Sol LeWitt (Pace Wildenstein, New York), who died last year, was one of the founders of Concept and Minimal Art. His Zigzag, which measures 12 meters long and 5 meters high, consists of 6 painted concrete blocks arranged in zigzag form to create a
monumental screen.
In Lattice III, British artist Conrad Shawcross (*1977; Victoria Miro, London) continues his investigations into the geometry of the tetrahedron. Measuring 5 x 7 x 5 meters, the sculpture consists of 250 irregular four-sided shapes forming a dense system of latticework that could, in theory, expand forever. Shawcross regards the work as a fictitious «map of space», in which regions of the unknown can be continually added on to known regions.
Austrian artist Thomas Baumann’s (Galerie Nicola Krupp, Basel) contribution to Public Art Projects is a kinetic work entitled WAK. WAK is a Viennese dialect expression for staying in the water. Baumann will be using the fountain in front of Hall 2 of the international art show to install a glass channel for a hydraulic wave machine. Stones at one end of the trough serve as wave breakers to keep the water from splashing over the side. The sculpture alternately generates waves in one direction and then the other. From a specific point on, all the water in the fountain moves rhythmically, producing the sound of «the surf».
An exhibition of 60 further large-scale works (wall paintings, video projections, sculptures, installations, photographic series, and performances) will be on view in the Art Unlimited hall.
Art Basel
www.artbasel.com |
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