Simone Holliger. Wasting My Breath

Simone Holliger draws, sculpts and assembles volumes to generate bas-reliefs and sculptures in the round, like large figures that she places directly on the floor. She takes inspiration from the formal vocabulary of 20th century avant-garde sculpture to develop geometric and organic forms. Holliger adopts an uninhibited approach to the medium and uses flimsy materials, often paper suggestive of crumpled sheet metal, as well as foam, SAGEX and plaster.

In the exhibition space, the abstract shapes become architectural and anthropomorphic figures. Two sculptures coexist, at the same time independent and yet linked by a sinuous bond. The installation evokes the intimate question of the couple: what space is there for oneself, what is the relationship to the other, what belongs to us? She overturns the socially standardised representations of it as an ideal and considers what is perceived, accepted or obligatory. The interaction and the distance between the objects carve out an empty space, a mix of interior and exterior, an architectural depth that plays with ambiguities.

Though her large-scale works suggest a solidity and a very mineral-like density, they are only simulacra made of fragile materials: the two figures are like facade monoliths, imitation colossi recalling the ones used in processions and carnivals. They become concretions that question all the pretence in our private lives.

Simone Holliger was born in 1986 in Aarau. She lives and works in Basel.

The exhibition was supported by the Nestlé Foundation for the Arts, the Kanton Basel Stadt Kultur and the Pro Helvetia Foundation