Witness, 2000 Courtesy Artangel, London; Timothy Tylor Gallery, London und Galerie Volker Diel Berlin Susan Hiller Recall Click for English text Susan Hiller zählt zu den faszinierendsten und einflussreichsten europäischen Künstlerinnen der Gegenwart. Ihr Werk umfasst Video- und Soundinstallationen, Vitrinen mit Artefakten, Zeichnungen auf Papier, "automatische" Aufzeichnungen und Fotografien. Konsequent verfolgt Susan Hiller mit ihren Arbeiten das über die Jahre entwickelte Thema des Sammelns, Erforschens und des Transformierens von Gegenständen, an denen spezifische Erinnerungen haften. Obwohl sich die Künstlerin auf die Methoden und Präsentationsformen der Konzeptkunst bezieht, ist es vor allem die Beschäftigung mit unheimlichen Phänomenen und visionären Erfahrungen von Menschen, wie ESP, Telekinese oder Vorausahnung, die Hiller in ihren Arbeiten thematisiert. Die Kunsthalle Basel zeigt die erste bedeutende institutionelle Ausstellung von Susan Hiller in Kontinentaleuropa. Kuratiert wird die Ausstellung, die keineswegs eine Retrospektive sondern eine repräsentative, zusammenhängende Auswahl aus Hillers Arbeiten der letzten 30 Jahre zeigt, von James Lingwood. Im Oberlichtsaal präsentieren wir "Witness", 2000: Eine vielsprachige Sammlung von Berichten über "unheimliche Begegnungen" und anderen visionären Erfahrungen, die von anonymen Personen erzählt werden. Im Erdgeschoss zeigen wir das Werk "Clinic", 2004, das sich mit Nahtoderfahrungen auseinandersetzt. Die dritte grosse Installation, "PSI Girls", 1999, zeigt in der Form einer monumentalen 5-Kanal-Video-Installation, Ausschnitte aus Hollywoodfilmen über junge Frauen mit übernatürlichen Fähigkeiten. Hillers neueste Arbeit, "The J-Street Project", 2003-2005 setzt sich aus einem Zyklus von drei Fotografie-Serien zusammen. Kurator: James Lingwood In Zusammenarbeit mit BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead und Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves, Porto. Ausstellungsdauer: 30.1. - 27.3.2005 Oeffnungszeiten: Di/Mi/Fr 11 - 18 Uhr, Do 11 - 20.30 Uhr, Sa/So 11 - 17 Uhr Kunsthalle Basel Steinenberg 7 4051 Basel Telefon +41 61 206 99 00 Fax + 41 61 206 99 19 Email info@kunsthallebasel.ch www.kunsthallebasel.ch Susan Hiller Recall Susan Hiller is one of the most intriguing and influential artists working in Europe today. Her daring and thought-provoking work is informed by conceptual practice. Although the artist employs procedures of systematization such as cataloging and indexing, and uses seemingly neutral formats such as "collection"or "record", her work often involves highly idiosyncratic accounts of unusual personae and deals with uncanny phenomena. We at the Kunsthalle Basel are very happy to host the first major institutional exhibition of Susan Hiller in continental Europe. The show itself has been curated by James Lingwood and was first presented last year in a different form at the BALTIC, the Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England. By no means a retrospective, the show is a representative and coherent selection from Susan Hiller's oeuvre of the last thirty years and includes two major sound installations. In the Oberlichtsaal we present "Witness", 2000, a multilingual collection of stories told by anonymous individuals who went through "close encounters" and other visionary experiences. In these stories, the truth of eyewitness accounts merges with subjective expressions of belief and with collective narrative structures of the unconscious, the stories remain more or less the same across different cultures and are passed down throughout generations. In the last room of the ground floor we show "Clinic", 2004, a work that explores the contents of one specific type of human perception that puts the scientistic construction of knowledge in question - the near-death experience. The third installation in Basel is "PSI Girls", 1999, a monumental five-channel video piece in which the excerpts from different Hollywood movies show girls with supernatural abilities. The work attests to the powerful appeal of the unconscious within the production of the most cliched of images. The show includes the often quoted piece "Dedicated to the Unknown Artists", 1972-1976, a collection of postcards with views of rough sea. While formally in keeping with conceptual art's notorious procedures of researching, classifying and indexing, the work draws on vernacular imagery and unravels an ambiguous, romantic content. In similar mode, "Inside a Cave Home", 1983, has images of the sea hand-painted on large reproductions of a postcard showing the banal setting of a living room in the Australian outback. It is also very exciting for the Kunsthalle Basel to be able to show for the first time three series of photographs from "The J-Street Project", 2003-2005, a new cycle conceived during the artist's DAAD residency in Berlin. This authoritative work represents a photographic investigation of specific places in Germany - streets in big cities as well as forgotten country roads - that have the word "Jude" (Jew) in their names. As is the case with many works by Susan Hiller, these linked series, called "Brandenburg Suite", "Snow Scenes" and "Country Roads" form part of a more extensive on-going project that will culminate in a video installation on which the artist is working at present. The exhibition is a collaborative project of BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; Museu de Arte Contempornea de Serralves, Porto and Kunsthalle Basel. January 30 - March 27, 2005 |
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