1. Tacita Dean, Inferno, 2019 (detail), Chalk on masonite, 242 x 1219cm, Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, on permanent loan to the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Photo: Stephen White and Co, Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, © Tacita Dean
Out of the box
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Schaulager, an art storage facility in Basel dedicate an exhibition to its latest acquisition made by 25 artists such as Tacita Dean, Katharina Fritsch, Thomas Ruff and Jean-Frédéric Schnyder. But how does this place came to be? How does the Schaulager present work "Out of the box"?
The lasting impact of the
Emanuel Hoffmann
Foundation
Since the creation of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation in 1933, the wish of the foundation was to collect contemporary art of it's time and to "embrace the present" while looking ahead to it's future. During the first ten years, the collection was mostly available on loan, or on request, but since 1941 the collection is on permanent loan to the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel in order to present it to a wider public.
It was the wish of the founder, Maja Hoffmann-Stehlin in memory of her husband Emanuel Hoffmann who passed away in 1932 to continue the collection they started with acquisition of contemporary art in numerous cities of Europe. And while the couple had enough money due to the pharmaceutic company Hoffmann-La Roche, their wish was always to give this art to a wider public.
Since the 30s and 40s, the foundation has collected works of contemporary arts of it's time ranging from Hans Arp, Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí, Robert Delaunay, Max Ernst, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso, which has been the funders of modern arts, to works of different post-war movement such as Joseph Beuys, Mario Merz, Bruce Nauman, Francesco Clemente, Thomas Demand, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman, Bill Viola and Jeff Wall.
Since the death of its original funder, Maja Hoffmann-Stehlin in the late 1980s, the foundation was rule by her granddaughter, Maja Oeri. The acquisition of her time was mostly focus on female artist such as Gina Fischli, Toba Khedoori, Elizabeth Peyton and many others.
In 1999, she created the Laurenz Foundation, in memory of her first son. The organisation is aimed to supports the Schaulager and to endows two professorships at the Art History Department of the University of Basel. At the time of this reorganisation, a newly develop building was being build by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron between 1998 and 2003. This building will hold the collection in a completely new way, not in boxes or on metallic shelf, but rather installed in room, like a museum but in storage.
The exhibition
The exhibition "Out of the box" is an hommage to this design. Thus, the Senior Curator of the Schaulager, Heidi Naef, and the Schaulager’s research team, through about the evolution of Contemporary Art and how it's always trying to go over what already happened.
In the exhibition, the "Box" is a room, an exhibition room for an artist, a space to showcase there art. Without these walls, the works can't be presented in a museum space, and with a wall the works can evolve, can shift the space and showcase digital and classical artwork.
Most of the works of the exhibition are newly acquired works, photographies, drawings and video installations made by numerous important contemporary artists such as Tacita Dean, Thomas Ruff and Robert Gober. Some of the works we're acquired after or during important exhibitions or presentations such as the complex audiovisual installation Ravel Ravel (2013) by the Albanian artist Anri Sala , which were acquired for the collection after it premiered at the Venice Biennale in 2013.
Sometimes, the artist gets a bigger space such as Tacita Dean, an artist who is deeply important in the collection of the foundation due to numerous acquisition and a solo exhibition of her work at the Kunstmuseum Basel - Gegenwart in 2021-2022. The artist is presented with a large-format chalk drawing "Inferno" (2019), the overpainted photograph "Purgatory" (Threshold) (2020), and her 35mm film "Paradise" (2021).
Lastly, one of my favourite work is the video work of David Claerbout, which confront the viewer to a "Wildfire" (meditation on fire) (2019-2020).
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Schaulager
Date: 10.6.2023 – 19.11.2023
Curators: Heidi Naef
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Schaulager
Schaulager
Ruchfeldstrasse 19
CH-4142 Münchenstein
Phone: +41 61 335 32 32
Mail: info@schaulager.org