Tag: basel

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Boris Nikitin (1979)

Boris Nikitin, a Basel-born artist with roots in Ukraine, Slovakia, France, and Judaism, is a multifaceted force in the world of theatre. As a director, author, and curator of the biennial festival “It’s The Real Thing – Basel Documentary Platform,” Nikitin has spent over thirteen years exploring the complexities of identity and reality through his productions, texts, and happenings. His works defy categorization, blurring the line between illusion and performance, and challenging the boundaries of documentary and propaganda. Nikitin’s highly acclaimed pieces have traveled the globe, offering raw and unapologetic commentary while remaining meticulously crafted. “Boris Nikitin is a beacon of critical thought in contemporary theatre,” praises “Theater heute,” a leading professional journal in Germany. And according to “Tagesanzeiger,” a daily newspaper in Zurich, Nikitin is a force to be reckoned with in the world of documentary theatre, pushing its limits with unparalleled fervor.

www.ftn-books.com has the invitation card for his Tinguely project in Basel now available.

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Delphine Reist (1970)

Delphine Reist (1970) presents a myriad of objects in her exhibits that come to life on their own: cars, tools, sinks transformed into fountains, office chairs, and flags that spin on their own axis. What is most striking, aside from this spontaneous movement, is that all these objects remain true to themselves. In her work, the shopping carts remain shopping carts, the oil remains oil, the drums are still drums, and so on. They are not representations of other objects, making it a form of concrete art.

Last year an exhibition was held at the Tinguely Museum, which invitattion card is now available at www.ftn-books.com

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Carrie Mae Weems (1953)

Weems received training in both dance and photography prior to enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid-1980s to study folklore. It was during this time that she developed an interest in the observation methods used in the social sciences. In the early 1990s, Weems began incorporating her own persona into her photographic compositions in an intentional effort to evoke a sense of both being within and viewing from outside the work. She has since referred to this recurring figure as an “alter-ego,” a “muse,” and a “witness to history,” representing both the artist and the audience. “As a Black woman, it is crucial that she is engaged with the world around her,” Weems explained, “engaged with history, with seeing, with existing. She is a guide into rarely seen circumstances.”

Using her own image, Weems explores a wide range of topics in her 1990 Kitchen Table Series, which consists of 20 gelatin silver prints and 14 texts on silkscreen panels. She comments on “woman’s subjectivity, woman’s ability to celebrate her body, and the woman’s construction of herself and her own image.” Throughout the series, Weems, or rather her protagonist, is depicted in the same intimate domestic interior. The photographs feature a wooden table illuminated by an overhead light, and include scenes such as Untitled (Man smoking) and Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Makeup), in which the protagonist interacts with a variety of characters (friends, children, lovers) and objects (posters, books, playing cards, and a birdcage). In Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Makeup), for example, the woman and a young girl sit at the table, gazing into mirrors as they apply lipstick in parallel motions. The photograph highlights the notion that gender is a learned behavior, while also centering its Black female subjects with tenderness.

www.ftn-books.com has currently several titles on Weems available en highly recommend her Basel exhibition which is currently on show.

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Raoul La Roche (1889-1965)

Raoul La Roche started in the 1930s loaning generously and even giving away some works from his collection. From 1932 onwards, the Kunsthaus Zurich was able to showcase a larger group of paintings. During the war years, which La Roche spent “under the most difficult circumstances in Lyon and later in Paris,” his house and collection were spared from losses. In 1950, the Kunstmuseum Basel received fourteen works as a long-term deposit, which resulted in the first donation of 24 works in 1952: four paintings by Picasso, nine by Bracque, five by Gris, four by Léger, and one each by Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. Two more donations followed in 1955 and 1963, so that eventually more than half of the collection, including paintings, works on paper, and four sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz, made its way to Basel.At the same time, nine significant works went to the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, partly as compensation for the permission to export the rest of the collection from France.

In 1962, Raoul La Roche, who suffered from a severe rheumatic disease, abandoned his Paris residence and returned to his hometown, where he donated the “Maison La Roche” to the Fondation Le Corbusier. In the same year, the University of Basel honored him with an honorary doctorate.

He found his final resting place in the Wolfgottesacker cemetery in Basel.

www.ftn-books.com has the 1963 catalog on his gift to the Kunstsammlung Basel collection now available.

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Stephan Balkenhol (1957)

Stephan Balkenhol at work

With his sculptures, usually carved out of one massive block of wood, Stephan Balkenhol was among the first artists of his generation to reintroduce the figure to contemporary sculpture. With a hammer and chisel, the artist gouges his figures out of the tree trunk. He takes no effort to hide the shavings and traces of the tools visible in the wood with its knots, grain and cracks. Rather this is part of the work – an inheritance that was perhaps passed on by his minimalist teacher Ulrich Rückriem. In most aspects, however, Balkenhol did not follow the Minimalist and Conceptual trends he was exposed to as a young sculptor. Inspired by the social and political changes of the 80’ s, the artist felt it was necessary to reinvent the figure “to resume an interrupted tradition”.

I have been following his vcareer for over 20 years now and to me Balkenhol is always a surprise. His technicque of woodsculpting it at his very best at this moment asnd his sculptures grow bigger and bigger and keep getting more important by the years. www.ftn-books.com has some nice Balkenhol titles available.

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Michael Raedecker (1963)

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Michael Raedecker records the memories held within spaces and objects in his enigmatic and dream-like paintings. Suburban homes, tree houses and empty rooms and vacant chairs, all float in haunting isolation. Muted hues are penetrated with thread and needle where the artist hand-sews forms into textural materiality. Raedecker mines art history and popular culture, sourcing compositions from 17th-century garland paintings, obscure magazines, and film stills.

this filmed portrait on Raedecker is by Franz Weisz

Since the beginning of his career as a painter Raedecker has incorporated embroidery into his works as a visual counterpoint to his washed-out paint application. His elaborate needlework adds linear definition to representational forms and the thread and paint visually mix together in areas of dense detail or abstraction. The absence or suggested loss of human presence invites the viewer to contemplate architecture as a mental or emotional space, where the domestic realm is detached from practical implications, yet deeply personal. Images of flowers, food and textiles with darkly ambiguous titles bring the domestic associations of his stitching into play with his subject matter, and show his interest in the Dutch tradition of still-life and Vanitas paintings. Raedecker’s distinct formal language explores the relationship between the formless, complex nature of our emotions and the vessels we use to contain them.

www.ftn-books.com has some nice Raedecker titles available.

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Mark Tobey (1890-1976)

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Mark Tobey is a great artist and well ahead of his time with his abstract painting. His works look to be coincidental, but these abstract paintings and drawings are far from accidentally. It is a bit like the painting by Hans Hartung. The sketches he makes are the starting point for the paintings. Tobey has influenced Jackson Pollock with his paintings, but never has become the household name that Pollock became after his death. Still his paintings are impressive and there are always parts to discover and admire. It is a way of modern painting, greatly influenced by Chinese calligraphy,  that never grows old fashioned. It fascinates from beginning to end. Finding Tobey paintings in Europe is a hard job. There are some of them to be found in the Beyeler and Kunstmuseum Basel since he moved to Switzerland in the Sixties with his companion. But his paintings are rare, i am not completely sure, but according to my information, but even the Stedelijk Museum has no works by Tobey in its collection. They had an exhibition with Tobey in 1966, which catalogue was designed by Wim Crouwel and is one of the best Crouwel designed in the Sixties for the Stedelijk Museum (available at www.ftn-books.com), but that is all i could find. Still Tobey is well worth checking out, since he is the natural link between Jackson Pollock and the newest generation of Abstract painters.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Beyeler (2010)

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This is the exhibituion i remember most of all the exhibitions we visited during the last decade. It was a “one of a kind” event, which will never be repeated at such a scale. The exhibition covered over 100 Basquiat paintings and certainly not the smallest of them all. The entire FONDATION BEYELER  ( except the Giacometti/Monet room) was devoted to one of the greatest of all painters from the 20th Century. At the time i had the foresight to take some extra Beyeler publicity folders with me and now i have decided to sell 3 of those to collectors. For this original publicity folder please take a look at www.ftn-books.com

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Rainer Fetting (1949)

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Rainer Fetting was one of my favorit artists in the Eighties, but i almost had forgotten him until half a year ago a beautiful and impressive painting by Fetting was auctioned at the Venduehuis. A large painting which belonged to the Hans Sonnenberg collection. A famous gallery owner who was always charmed by artists who focussed on male figures and nudes. Fetting was certaimly one of them. Fetting was considered to be part of the NEUE WILDE mouvement from the early eighties and had developed a very recognizable style of his own. Bright colors , loose in composition and technique his paintings shine after they are finished and the one from the Venduehuis is an excellent example.

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His paintings are starting to appear at auctions and i am very curious what the future will bring. My personal guess is that Fetting is such an artist who is forgotten for the last 2 decades , but in a few years will be one of the great artists from the eighties. www.ftn-books.com has some excellent catalogues on this great germna artist.

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Rene Burri ( 1933-2014)

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The world renowned Magnum photographer René Burri (born in 1933), whose legendary portrait of Che Guevara has been a photographic icon for many years, caught a number of important artists of the 20th century through his lens. The great photographer also realised numerous individual portraits and reportages on his friend Jean Tinguely and his work between 1967 and 1991. Camera in hand, Burri observes the artist at work in his atelier “Le Cheval Blanc” at Soisy-sur-École and during construction of the monumental sculpture “Le Cyclop”, literally peering over his shoulder. In the photographic series showing Tinguely installing his works at the World Exhibition in Montreal, in Basel or in Venice, the photographer manages to capture the artist’s spontaneity and essence – his fascination with movement – in almost cinematographic shoots. He was recognized as one of the true great photographers of the 20th century and in his birthland  Switzerland numerous exhibitions were organized with the photographs of Burri. Among them , arguably the best exhibitions at the Tinguely museum in Basel, where the series on Tinguely were exhibited.

The exhibition poster for the Tinguely exhibition is available at www.ftn-books.com

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