Ursula Mumenthaler – “Le Plein et le Vide »

September 2 – October 14, 2006

The view opens into the depths of a derelict building. Windows and doors unfold rhythmically into the deserted, meticulously emptied halls. The view of the surrounding countryside is diffused. The camera focuses on abstract elements of the structure, developing an interplay of repetitions and reproductions to generate a strong feeling of spatial attraction, indivisibly binding a profusion of meanings and secrets.

Ursula Mumenthaler (born in 1955 in Staffelbach, lives and works in Geneva), continues her photographic series of works based primarily in and about space, reflecting on the reality of images. Above all, her pictures repeatedly depict the fragile, ambivalent nature of experiences embodied in architecture, which, as a solid form of spatial settings, supposedly structures life clearly, directing it into orderly paths.

In an earlier series, she photographed abandoned halls of factories, which she had previously defamiliarized by artistic means. Oscillating between painted surfaces and erected architecture, presentation and representation, these images subtly shatter the perception of allegedly stable spaces.

Mumenthaler’s interest in presenting space, composition, and light, coalesces in her new work with a look at a situation she finds and approaches through apparent documentation. The scene is a long deserted building in Agra, which served as a climatic health spa for half a century, until its doors were finally closed late in the 60s. Mumenthaler’s photographic eye highlights the ruined complex’s atmospheric, esthetic, and narrative features. Her camera’s perspectives of the empty spaces focus less on the materialistic destruction and more on the loss of a clearly identifiable function. The emptiness assumes a wealth of certain associations, memories, and past experiences. Every possible real and imaginary space of the past and future breaks in via real space stepping out of the flow of time. The simultaneous visualization of what once was, and what perhaps will be, places Mumenthaler’s photographs at the crossroads of reality and fiction. Meanings and secrets are hence purged. Neither of them can exist outside of the continuum of time.

Katrin Steffen
August

Translation : Antoinette Aichele

Andreas Golinski

Insight

2 September - 14 October 2006

We stash
We hoard
We bury for later
(Andreas Golinski)

In his video work and installations, Andreas Golinski (born 1979), an artist from Essen in Germany, manages to open up multilayer memory structures. This is a direct reflection of his interest in individual fates and powerfully vivid personal stories. An audiovisual reconstruction of events often scraping the depths of human existence is used to draw them back to consciousness. The work of Andreas Golinski turns architectural constructions bearing witness to past and present life situations into surfaces reflecting events and destinies yet to be explored.

In his new work Insight Andreas Golinski re-reflects those realisations that have been gained one more time: experiences of reality and the hidden contents of consciousness meet in the mirror medium. The mirror itself exposes flashes of disparate levels of significance, being considered an attribute of wisdom and truth, a symbol of vanity and transience as well as a means of (self) representation. The utilisation of mirrors provides an opportunity for existential orientation, uncovering concealed substance layers, while at the same time also allowing to disguise. Insight returns the beholder's glance and activates harboured worlds of experience. Vague voices and eerie, digitally distorted scratching sounds emerge mysteriously from the semi-transparent mirror objects. A reflection of shadowy existences, the true story of which is continuously reshaping itself in the process of reflection.

Note:
The music project Untertage, a cooperation by Andreas Golinski and Thomas Köner (born 1965 in Bochum), will be shown for the first time on the occasion of the sinus-series 06 held in the foyer of the Theater Basel on Friday, 6 October. In Untertage (literally 'Below Surface'), the two artists consider the most important factor of influence on the Ruhr Area: the world underground. These places that never see the light, labyrinths of shafts, pits, tunnels, galleries and caverns, are not only the home of coal and stone, but also of the sound material on which this project is based. Untertage explores the once so loud and unique sound landscape of the Ruhr Area, including its stories and myths, bringing them to light once more.
Further information is available at www.sinus-series.com

Katrin Steffen
August

Translation : Antoinette Aichele