Double #3: Sonia Kacem / Lionne Saluz
Kunst Raum Riehen
Until April 19
In the Double exhibition format, a regional and an international position come together to create unexpected thematic links through two independent projects. For the third edition, curator Simone Neuenschwander has invited the artists Sonia Kacem (*1985, lives in Geneva) and Lionne Saluz (*1990, lives in Basel).
Swiss-Tunisian artist Kacem works with materials and textiles sourced online, from secondhand shops, or from workshops to create large, flexible sculptures. These materials are transformed into abstract objects or wall installations in which she explores the material’s physical properties, the effects of gravity, and the gestures of draping. The works become traces in space that refer to Kacem’s immediate surroundings or to Mediterranean and urban regions from her travels. At the center of her practice is the question of how abstraction can become a space for fiction and memory. Kacem has titled her exhibition at Kunst Raum Riehen “A Doll’s House.” She stages the building’s three stacked floors with works that create an interior-like atmosphere and allow visitors to experience the architecture in a new way.
“A penny here, a penny there“—that is the title Saluz has given to her exhibition. For some time now, she has been exploring the interplay between work and money. She typically approaches this theme through comic drawings, which she presents as excerpts and individual panels. In short scenes, she uses irony to point to contradictions within the economic system that structures our lives. The production process plays a key role: the motifs are copied or traced in watercolor or acrylic. She works with transparent surfaces such as tracing paper, foil, or glass, which allude to reproduction techniques and the tradition of copying. At Kunst Raum Riehen, Saluz shows small-format acrylic paintings on polyester film (resembling individual frames in early animated cartoons) and large-format acrylic paintings on Plexiglas, as well as a mural.
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