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Exhibition
(Curatorial work)

Picture a Vacuum!

A vacuum is a result of the absence of matter in an airless space. But a vacuum may also be felt, for example in situations in which our accustomed scope for action is lacking. Titled Picture a Vacuum! the Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt Annual Exhibition 2021 reflects on the many different strategies that artists adopt to record or reconstruct vacuum-like states in the present. Eight positions will be on show, all of which the Kunstkredit Commission singled out for one of its 2020 grants. The works are about acoustic silence and resonance, landscapes and urban spaces devoid of humans, gaps in our own powers of perception, omissions in the historical record, and the lack of diversity in gender roles on the web. So unexpected and abundant are the approaches showcased here that suction becomes productive.

With Pável Aguilar, Franziska Baumgartner, Franziska Furter, Chantal Küng, Barbara Maria Meyer, Katrin Niedermeier, Emanuel Rossetti and Manuel Scheiwiller

Group show, Kunsthalle Basel
With Pável Aguilar, Franziska Baumgartner, Franziska Furter, Chantal Küng, Barbara Maria Meyer, Katrin Niedermeier, Emanuel Rossetti and Manuel Scheiwiller
Curated by Eva-Maria Knüsel
2021

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Exhibition
(Curatorial work)

Soft Shell

The group exhibition includes works by five artists who have chosen painting as their preferred medium of expression. The works by Natacha Donzé, Ray Hegelbach, Ivan Mitrovic, Anna Schirin Schneider and Nora Steiner are characterized by the engagement with everyday impressions and symbols, specifically the social power differentials and the digital and pop-cultural imagery they inherently express and reproduce. They experiment with and freshly interpret traditional conventions of visual representation, gestural habits, and viewing regimes within the context of painting. The title of the exhibition, “Soft Shell”, makes reference to the contradictory materiality of painting as well as the clash of assertiveness and vulnerability and playfulness and seriousness in the artists’ respective practices.

Group show, Kunsthaus Langenthal
With Natacha Donzé, Ray Hegelbach, Ivan Mitrovic, Anna Shirin Schneider and Nora Steiner
Curated by Eva-Maria Knüsel
2020

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Exhibition
(Curatorial work)

Unbehaust

The metaphor of the perforated house symbolises the dissolving separation between exterior and interior, private and public, and analogue and digital life brought about by new forms of communication and mobility. This contemporary homelessness is touched upon in many ways in the works oft he artists; whether in the ephemerality of the media and materials used, the atmospheric presentation or in addressing topics such as hospitality, patterns of migration and the global consumption of resources.

Group show, Kunsthaus Langenthal
With Anja Braun, Daniel Dressel, Leo Hofmann, Daniel V. Keller, Lynne Kouassi and Rebecca Kunz
Curated by Eva-Maria Knüsel
2019

4 / 11
Exhibition
(Curatorial work)

sic! Art Space

The independent art space sic! offers local and international artists the opportunity to realise new projects, provides time and space for experimentation as well as discussion. We show work by artists who we find to be relevant to contemporary discourse and are committed to educating our audience about them. We are interested in social and political issues and are convinced, that art is an adequate means of reflecting on these while activating the force of inspiration.

sic! Raum für Kunst
Project space, Lucerne, 2013–2020
Co-directed by Laura Breitschmid and Eva-Maria Knüsel

5 / 11
Exhibition
(Curatorial work)

Up #1

This sculptural expansion was developed for the small art space sic! Elephanthouse in Lucerne, a small concrete shed located in a lively neighborhood by the railroad tracks. Rising skyward from the exterior facade, the white wooden structure appears to be sprouting from the small gray building like a geometrically reduced construct. The installation is visible from afar, contrasts in its whiteness with the surroundings and changes its aspect depending on the perspective of the viewer from towerlike to signlike. The installation was conceived for a duration of 4 years.

Lang/Baumann, «UP #1»
Intervention, sic! Raum für Kunst, Lucerne
Curated by Laura Breitschmid, Eva-Maria Knüsel and Nadine Wietlisbach
2014–2018

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Text
(Text contribution)

Traces in Sight

The human body is the central theme and tool in Lotta Gadola‘ s artistic work. The interest is focused on the discussions about, around and with the body, in connection with social and identity-creating topics. From the body‘s own hair, through the contact lens to the smartphone — the body and its physical prostheses and mental extensions are often the subject of the investigation. In the image-search the artist draws on precise observations of everyday life.

The publication of the “Junge Kunst Stadt Luzern” series focuses on the youngest groups of work, consisting of performance, video works and photographic series. In order to translate the cinematic of the artistic creation into book form, individual video sequences are prepared as flipbooks and enable different speeds of reading of the contributions, which are contextualized by an art-historical and media-theoretical text.

Lotta Gadola – Traces in Sight
Text Contributions: Doris Gassert, Claire Hoffmann, Eva-Maria Knüsel
Graphic Design: Megi Zumstein, Luzern
Editor: Stadt Luzern, Kunsthalle Luzern
Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Wien
2020

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Text
(Editorial Work)

Lack

Lack is a magazine pairing each issue with an art institution and one of their exhibitions. Its 10th issue titled «off-color» is published at the occasion of the exhibition of Color at Helmhaus Zurich. The additional «f» in the title is meant to signal a slight but conscious divergence between the nature of this magazine and the approach of the exhibition and the institution that presents it. «off-color» thus investigates the limits of colored representation or representation through and with color – by an array of contributions by writers and artists from various perspectives.

Lack #10: off-color
Contributions by White on White, Ariane Koch & Sarina Scheidegger, Ian Whittlesea, Simon Vagts, Susanne Stauss, Simon Rothöhler, Bassma El Adisey & Daniel Morgenthaler, DeForrest Brown Jr., Lea Loeb and Mathis Neuhaus.
Editorial team: Remo Bitzi, Laura Breitschmid, Eva-Maria Knüsel and Marc Schwegler
Graphic Design: meierkolb – André Meier & Franziska Kolb
Published by Präsens Editionen, sic! Raum für Kunst and Helmhaus Zurich
2019

Language: English/German
Edition: 1200
Pages: 112
Size: 220 x 310 mm

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Text
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Spots

This publication documents the solo exhibition «Spots» by Franziska Baumgartner. As a last intervention before the reconstruction, she covered the walls of the exhibition space Klingental, Basel with rice paper. The starchy material combined with the wall paint and began to dissolve during the drying process. At one point the spots burst open, bulging and bending, elsewhere the paint together with the rice paper flaked off in large shreds and fell to the floor, revealing traces of paint, wall drawings and drill holes from earlier exhibitions – allowing an insight into the eventful history of the room.

Spots – Franziska Baumgartner
Text contributions: Eva-Maria Knüsel and Simone Lappert
Graphic Design: Atlas Studio
2019

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Text
(Text contribution)

Paravent

The world of birds as a mirror of our environment and as a symbol of the relationship between humans and animals builds the starting point for the artist duo Flurina Badel and Jérémie Sarbach's solo exhibition "Paravent" at sic! Elephanthouse. Using the trompe-l'oeil effect, the artists bring the outside world into the interior and create a thinking space, in which complex relationships between nature and culture open up. The installation was framed by a whistling performance, which the British composer Fred Frith created especially for the exhibition. The show was accompanied by a publication with text contributions and the whistling score.

Paravent – Flurina Badel & Jérémie Sarbach
Contributions: Samuel Camenzind, Fred Frith, Eva-Maria Knüsel
Graphic Design: Badel/Sarbach
2019

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Text
(Textbeitrag)

Soucoupes Volantes

In spring 2018, students of option «Construction, Art et Espace» of HEAD – Genève participated in a workshop in Langenthal’s former porcelain factory. They reflected on issues relating to this now abandoned industrial site. Fascinated by the factory’s history and the stories that surround it, the students and their teachers shared their experiences in the form of artistic projects that evoked, through the site’s furniture and materials, the anecdotes and atmosphere of this unique part of the Swiss industrial heritage.

Editorial team: Magdalena Gerber, Katharina Hohmann, Benoît Renaudin
Text contributions by Magdalena Gerber, Katharina Hohmann, Eva-Maria Knüsel
Graphic design: Magdalena Gerber, Benoît Renaudin
Published by HEAD – Genève
In cooperation with Kunsthaus Langenthal
2018

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Text
(Text contribution)

Poncho

"Poncho" is published on the occasion of Sara Gassmann's exhibition at sic! Elephanthouse and documents the ceramic work series "Domestic Stare". Sara Gassmann is searching for a form that functions as a body as well as a three-dimensional image and understands her involvement with ceramics as a further development of her painting practice.

Poncho – Sara Gassmann
Photos: Raphaëlle Müller
Text: Eva-Maria Knüsel
Graphic Design: meierkolb – André Meier & Franziska Kolb
2018

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