In her latest solo show, Zurich-based artist Sabina Baumann explores links between sculpture and painting, using simple materials and gestures to intervene in larger dialogues around art history and gender. The sculptures, each dated from this year, are largely made from unfired clay, which is either carefully molded or left raw and unprocessed. In many works, the artist has appended fragments of faces—such as lips, hair, mustaches—or gendered items of clothing. On the floor sit two clay squares shaped like pedestals, Gendered I and Gendered II, their identical forms barely differentiated by a minimal difference in size. One wears a woman’s undershirt; the other, a man’s. The simplicity of Baumann’s gesture highlights the mutability of surface attributes. Another central element of the exhibition is a series, titled “Art-Cover,” of objects that resemble masks; these, too, are unassuming ciphers for a larger discourse, as well as a kind of strange art-history quiz. They are, however, merely nonfunctional representations of masks; indeed, their referent is not the face, but twentieth-century artworks. The artistic predecessors are even noted by parenthetical addenda in the titles; for instance, masks decorated with abstract circular elements that recall the work of painter Sonia Delaunay are titled Art-Cover (S. D.), while Art-Cover (Y. K.) contains references to Yves Klein’s blue sponge paintings. Baumann’s novel referential methodology makes salient the complex theater of art-historical authority.
Translated from German by Jane Brodie.
