Ravel Ravel Interval (2017), an audio and video installation by Albanian artist Anri Sala (born 1974), is a key work in the exhibition OUT OF THE BOX. Instantly, upon entering the large space where this overwhelming installation is located, visitors are completely immersed in a work of art that impacts all of the senses, acoustically, visually and physically.  

The video projection shows two performances of the same piano concerto, played simultaneously. Vastly enlarged, the left hands of two concert pianists are seen gliding, dancing and hammering across the keyboard. Louis Lortie and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet are each playing Maurice Ravel’s Concerto pour la main gauche (1930), accompanied in both cases by the Orchestre National de France. This means that four elements are heard throughout: two pianos and two orchestras. However, since the tempi vary, the soundtracks drift apart undulating between harmony and dissonance only to meet up again a moment later. The sound is so virtuoso, so intoxicating that it has the power and immediacy of a performance in a concert hall. 

Since the two videos are projected on semitransparent screens suspended from the ceiling, one behind the other, both sound and sight overlap. And there are spatial intervals as well: the space between the two screens invites viewers to change their position within the installation and encourages them to move around.  

Ravel Ravel Interval is a version that has been adapted by the artist; it is presented here at Schaulager for the first time. The original installation, titled Ravel Ravel, was on view at the Venice Biennale in 2013 and was acquired by the  Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation that same year.

On Saturday, November 18, Anri Sala will talk with Benjamin Herzog, music editor at Radio SRF, about the making of this enthralling, multilayered work.

The ARTIST TALK is in English and lasts approximately one hour. The event is included in the price of admission; seating is limited.

To register, please click the following link.

A forest clearing, birdsong, sunlight breaking through the branches. An idyllic scene. A moment later smoke billows up into the sky and engulfs the lush greenery in a blazing fire – everything points to a catastrophe. The gaze then glides across a body of water, the birds start singing again and the scenery becomes brighter. The drama has died away and the loop begins all over again. In Wildfire (meditation on fire) (2019–2020), a spectacular 3D animation created by internationally renowned Belgian artist David Claerbout (b. 1969), we seem to have circled the event once in time and space.

Claerbout has specified the title by adding meditation on fire. Confronted with such a situation in reality, we would instantly take flight, but in Wildfire, the artist conjures the contemplation associated with watching flames that have been tamed. Our relationship to fire has always been ambivalent: fascination, warmth and the preparation of food stand opposed to the catastrophic scenario of destruction. This opposition also characterizes Claerbout’s work, but in his case neither side wins or loses.

Photography, film and digital media are the tools of Claerbout’s trade. He originally studied painting but soon turned to photography and cinematic techniques, gradually devoting himself to the subject of time. In ARTIST TALK, Claerbout will discuss his work Wildfire (meditation on fire), which is currently on view in the exhibition OUT OF THE BOX.

The ARTIST TALK lasts approximately one hour. It is included in the price of admission; seating is limited.

To register, please click the following link.

Photography for Dayanita Singh (b. 1961 in New Delhi) is a fluid medium. The internationally renowned artist from India assembles groups of photographs by form or content – people, architecture, interiors, furniture – and presents them in “mobile museums”: on paravents or in modular display cases, variable shelves or stacked boxes. She thus also comments on the act of exhibiting as such. Books play a key role for her as a handy, democratic medium.

Four works by the artist are on view in the current exhibition OUT OF THE BOX.

Dayanita Singh will speak about her intriguing, captivating artistic practice with Dr. Mario Kramer at Schaulager on Sunday, 5 November at 12 p.m.

She studied Visual Communication at the National Institute for Design in Ahmedabad and Documentary Photography at the International Center of Photography in New York. She has captured a great diversity of motifs in her largely black-and-white photography of the past 40 years. Her pictures give tangible shape to such wide-ranging interests as Indian music, India’s changing society, friendship, classifications and gender roles. Since, for her, images do not exist in isolation, she consistently focuses on how they interrelate.

The ARTIST TALK lasts approximately one hour. It is included in the price of admission; seating is limited.

To register, please click the following link.

The British artists Jane & Louise Wilson (b. 1967) have been working together as a sibling duo since their student days. The subject of their 4-channel video installation GAMMA (1999/2023) is a decommissioned United States Air Force base at Greenham Common in Berkshire, England. During the1980’s thousands of women activists gathered at Greenham Common, to protest against nuclear armaments and established and maintained a Women’s Peace Camp there for almost twenty years. GAMMA is currently on view in the exhibition OUT OF THE BOX.

In their talk, Jane & Louise Wilson speak with Dr. Filipa Ramos, curator and lecturer at the FHNW Basel, about the artistic approach to their work, which has acquired strikingly new and different relevance today more than twenty years after it was made.

The ARTIST TALK lasts about one hour and is included in the price of admission.
The number of seats is limited.

Please use the following link to register for the event.

The American media artist Gary Hill (b. 1951) is considered one of the foundational figures within the 1970s video art and new media genres. His complex video installation Circular Breathing (1994) was acquired by the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation a year after it was created and is currently on view in the exhibition OUT OF THE BOX.

The title Circular Breathing refers to a breathing technique that musicians use when playing horn and reed instruments to produce a continuous sound, seemingly without taking a breath. The artist used this mental image as the basis for his visualization of a long sequence, consisting of five atmospheric scenes that move across the projection field with mathematical precision.

Gary Hill will talk about his work and his artistic approach in conversation with Ute Holl, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Basel.

In 2023, “Laterne (Grosse Version)” (2000/2003), one of the major works by the German artist Martin Honert (*1953), became part of the collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation and is currently on view in the exhibition OUT OF THE BOX.

The large illuminated cube is a three-dimensional object elaborately designed by the artist, the content of which is based on personal childhood memories and everyday occurrences.

Martin Honert studied in the 80s at the “Staatlichen Kunstakademie Düsseldorf” with Fritz Schwegler. In 1995, he co-created the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale together with Katharina Fritsch and Thomas Ruff. From 1998 to 2021 he was a professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden in the class for three-dimensional work, focusing on plastics and sculpture.

In his lecture, Martin Honert will provide information about the process of creating this work and his artistic approach. The presentation will be accompanied by a conversation with Jasmin Sumpf, research assistant at Schaulager.