Come as You Are.
The exhibition shows works by the artists who in 2023 were awarded a grant by the Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt.

Curated by Séverine Fromaigeat atKunsthalle Basel, 08.09.2024-22.09.2024.

With Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, marc norbert hörler, Laura Mietrup, Luisanna Gonzalez Quattrini,
Nicolás Sarmiento, Jennifer Merlyn Scherler, Yanik Soland and Li Tavor.

"A group of modest-sized ceramics evoke fragments of architecture. Their volumes interpenetrate in an unending, formal dialogue, while the paintings on their sides tell of light, colour, and movement. Nicolas Sarmiento's work is rooted in his engagement with the things of everyday life. Neither his paintings nor his sculptures play the usual game of seduction; they are not embarrassed by manners. They are executed in a relationship to space, emptiness and construction that is wobbly and strange. They oscillate between the created and the uncreated. Nicolás Sarmiento is an artist of the ordinary who feeds off all things unspectacular. He finds his motifs on the street, in stairwells, at flea markets, in display windows, on the facades of buildings and in artist's books, in the most singular and trivial of banalities. He then fashions them into tools for conceptual experimentation and constantly evolving explorations of form. Pollinating the exhibition space, the simple seating arrangements that the artist has inserted into the Kunsthalle might easily be mistaken for the gallery's own furniture, were it not for their slightly battered appearance, hinting at a previous life elsewhere. Yet for visitors and museum attendants alike, the seating is a welcome opportunity to rest and relax, while creating a space in which they can fully perceive their environment."

Text by Séverine Fromaigeat.

“Rest and Support”.
Installation, various media on paper, two videos of 5 min. each, ceramics, seating.
Variable dimensions.
2024.
Photos: Serge Hasenböhler.