VERNISSAGE BUBBLES #6: Christina Frey – Antlitz

During her stays in the materials archive of the Sitterwerk Foundation, Christina Frey developed a visual-associative research practice with the material on site. In this way, she examines how things relate to each other and enters into a connection with them herself. A lemon, a book and a textile fabric that happens to be there are treated equally, regardless of their materiality, shape and origin. Certain objects quickly become favourites, others she has to work her way through, and this is precisely why they become important pieces. Quality does not show itself to be immediately readable, but is conveyed through time and occupation.

Based on Frey's interest in the face, the exhibition presents a selection of material and processing examples, everyday objects and illustrations in open books from the Material Archive as a dense system of reference. In it, Frey deals with the questions of what connects and separates us, makes us equal and differentiated. The things come together to form a temporary sculptural arrangement that carries these questions further. Individual elements overlap, stand opposite each other as contrasts, complement or connect each other through form, color, transparency or structure. The illustrations in the books mostly show sculptural works of faces that look at you. The reduction of these sculptural works to representation and thus to the surface creates their own, unstable images of them, which shift slightly with each reproduction and in each new context.

After the exhibition, the components move back to their original places in the archive. The dissolution of these constellations deliberately creates space for a new beginning, new decisions and experiences. What remains is the relationship to the things. In this way, this approach defies the common logics of a work of art. The work dissolves, is materially in flux and thus consistently eludes a commodity-like fixation.

Christina Frey (Laufen, BL) has received several awards, scholarships and acquisitions. She studied with Hannah Villiger, Jürg Stäuble and Guido Nussbaum in the sculpture class in Basel and has been a lecturer at the preliminary course at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts since 2004.