The Brooklyn Rail

For the first time in the twenty-five-year history of Fondation Beyeler, the entire Swiss park and museum have become the site of an experimental exhibition. On view from May 19 through August 11, 2024, Fondation Beyeler’s summer exhibition (titled HOME OF THE STRANGER at the time of writing—more on that shortly) is organized in partnership with the LUMA Foundation and features the work of twenty-nine artists from unique backgrounds and disciplines, including Kenyan-born British artist Michael Armitage, Japanese contemporary artist Fujiko Nakaya, American poet and essayist Anne Boyer, and Belgian scientist and sculptor Carsten Höller. Architects, musicians, composers, and philosophers have all been invited to participate, their work spilling into Fondation Beyeler’s galleries and gardens, outdoor terraces, and ancillary spaces such as the box office, gift shop, and green room. These works seemingly cover every inch of the foundation grounds; a thread between old and new, works by artists such as Paul Klee, Claude Monet, Louise Bourgeois, and Vincent van Gogh further adorn the property, in close proximity to the temporary works the exhibiting artists have shared. The special exhibition of artists and makers—whose contributions range from shelving and paintings, to live installations of digital ecologies—complements Fondation Beyeler’s permanent collection, setting the stage for a collaborative, liberating, and above all else experiential summer of art. The show is a labyrinth that demands multiple visits, beckoning global audiences to return time and again over the course of the summer: experiencing spaces old and new, and engaging in temporal events like community gatherings, performances, poetry readings, and artist talks.

The foundation and art museum in Riehen, Switzerland (not far from Basel) is itself a place of discovery—and in 2024, audiences are invited to rediscover the gallery spaces by visiting the exhibition periodically, at different times. The show is meant to encourage artistic freedom and interdisciplinary exchange, in large part by creating spaces of collective responsibility inherent to the global contemporary art movement. Fondation Beyeler touts the exhibition as a living organism—as an entity that may evolve as the summer goes on—with participants offering their thoughts and ideas from conception through production and ultimately presentation. Initially titled DANCES WITH DAEMONS, even the show’s title is subject to change, with artists and curators alike contributing to the name of the show, crafting iterations ranging from THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR and CLOUD CHRONICLES, to ECHOES UNBOUND, ALL MY LOVE SPILLING OVER, and HOME OF THE STRANGER. The exhibition will continue to reinvent itself, with artists and curators consistently positing the next name change.

At the core of the evolution taking place are the connections and relationships among the show’s artists and curators—or collaborators, if you will. The approach, according to curators Philippe Parreno and Precious Okoyomon, nods at the “complexities and uncertainties involved in bringing artists together,” while also embracing these relationships—or entanglements—as a central part of the creative process. The concept for the show was developed by Parreno, Okoyomon, and a series of additional curators, including Sam Keller, Isabela Mora, Tino Sehgal, Mouna Mekouar, and the renowned Hans Ulrich Obrist, in close collaboration with the participating artists and Swiss art collector Maja Hoffmann. Obrist, who rose to acclaim in 1991, at the age of twenty-three, when he mounted an exhibition aptly titled The Kitchen Show in his apartment in St. Gallen, Switzerland, has since garnered a prolific reputation, integrating interviews and open dialogue into his artistic and curatorial work, and positioning art as an open system. The Fondation Beyeler show reflects Obrist’s desire to keep art fragmented, participatory, and free, with an emphasis on exhibitions in progress over fixed, linear shows. The exhibition emphasizes process over product, showcasing the artists’ pathways rather than strict iterations of their work. The curators, in preparation for the exhibition, engaged in extensive conversation and workshops—bringing idea after idea to the table, and blurring the bounds between a conventional show and a more experimental offering. Sculptures, paintings, chairs on which to rest or view additional works, and an entire room dedicated to Marlene Dumas came to life in the wake of these discussions.

The twenty-nine participating artists’ works are vast and varied. Italian philosopher Federeco Campagna and Mexican architect Frida Escobedo’s A Library as Large as the World (2024) features eight hundred books divided into a four-section library. Configured in the shape of a Pantelleria garden, the installation replicates the symbol for the “whole”—presenting the four seasons as they move through the life cycle of the world, so to speak. Audiences can immerse themselves in the brightness of summer in the first section, followed by the mold-green rot of autumn, and subsequently the white void of winter. The spring that ensues is bright red—a rebirth—or a place where fiction and reality come together. Meanwhile, Argentinian sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas engages the viewer with The End of Imagination VI (2024) and The End of Imagination VII (2024): live simulations of digital ecologies, featuring layers of both organic and inorganic, or both human and machine-made matter. Leveraging software to create large-scale worlds that model sculptures, the artist explores the effects of time on each work, defying thermodynamics to keep his creations in constant motion. Alien and other-worldly, the works are robotic and parasitic, fusing technology and biology. Nakaya’s fog piece Untitled (2024) is something of a metaphor for the show: mobile and ever-changing. Composed of potable water MeeFog nozzles and a high-pressure pump motor system, the work uses fog as a sculptural medium, blending water, air currents, directions, and time. Fluid and ephemeral, yet dense and opaque, here fog is used as, in the artist’s words, “both a phenomenon and an artifact.” The work, like the exhibition itself, evolves as time goes on, appearing ghostly on occasion but most often atmospheric—unfixed and mutable, extending through the gardens at the north and south ends of the main Fondation Beyeler building, and creating a feeling of motion that plays a central role in the show itself.