Schau Ort

Seline Baumgartner

17 Nov - 04 Dec 2010

© Seline Baumgartner
SELINE BAUMGARTNER
November 17 - December 4, 2010

Seline Baumgartner’s (*1980 in Zurich, Switzerland) work moves within an area of tension resulting from movement and stagnation, retardation and éclat. Her objects hover in a status of indecision, which is manifested in simple figures like the stranded airplane or the massively overloaded cart. These bodies are in the exact moment of extreme tension or release – just before or after they have collapsed or will burst at the seams. Through her targeted choice of medium and her precise handling of materiality, Baumgartner is able to emphasize this ambivalence and fragility. At the same time a playful element is a leitmotif in the artist’s oeuvre. It expresses the “other” space, in which social codes and structures of action might be absorbed and turned around. Seline Baumgartner confronts the seriousness of her chosen topics with a certain lightness of being. For us, the viewers, she opens up an imaginary “possibility-space”, mysterious and enigmatic, that leaves us with the substantial question: Why is it the way it is? And: Couldn’t it be different?

- Nadja Baldini