For their upcoming exhibition (in time for Art Basel week) across the entire newly renovated gallery in Basel, von Bartha present a collection of career highlights by two esteemed artists in dialogue. They include a handful of works by Irish-Welsh artist Barry Flanagan (1941-2009)—who was primarily known for his bronze sculptures—ranging from his larger-than-life cricket-playing hare to smaller, at times miniature, castings of dogs, humans, and elephants. These works will be juxtaposed with several large-scale paintings and drawings by German-born Danish artist Ursula Reuter Christiansen (*1943), whose practice spans more than 60 years.
As the artists’ work suggests, there is a moment in every fable where the boundary between the human and the animal becomes unstable and fluid. A creature speaks, a body transforms, a familiar form reveals an unfamiliar truth. It is in this transitional space, between the told and the seen, the known and the strange, that the works of Flanagan and Reuter Christiansen find their common ground. Reuter Christiansen's paintings place the human figure at the center of a psychological reckoning. Her subjects are exposed yet resistant, vulnerable yet insistent on their presence, in a world that feels at once raw and mythic. Each canvas unfolds a story, revealing the innermost characteristics of the subjects. As in “Woman with Serpent” (1983), the protagonist is both fragile and powerful. She looks down her nose whilst raising her chin in defiance. She is one with the snake that furtively navigates her neck. Flanagan's bronze hares occupy a different register. Leaping, balancing, resting, performing, his figures move through the world with a lightness that belies their material weight. The hare, long a creature of fable and folklore, in Flanagan's hands carries both wit and melancholy, reflecting something irreducibly human back at us. Brought together, the two bodies of work illuminate what fables have always known: that the figures through which we tell stories—whether human or animal, painted or cast—are never simply themselves. They are vessels for what we fear, what we desire, and what we cannot quite say directly.
The exhibition promises a lively, animated show full of stories and fantasies, with readings, guest-performances, and entertainment; you can find more information on their website. The public opening of the exhibit will take place on June 16 from 18:00-21:00.

Website
vonbartha.com/exhibitions/barry-flanagan-and-ursula-reuter-christiansen/

Where
von Bartha
Kannenfeldplatz 6
4056 Basel

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