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LANG/BAUMANN, "Beautiful Bridge #1",
2011
Peinture
mate ; 10 x 68 cm
Courtesy
of Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris
LANG/BAUMANN
29.04.2011 - 04.06.2011
Private
view Thursday 28 April 2011, from 6 pm
Sabina Lang and Daniel
Baumann were born in the early 1970s and have been
working together for a decade now. Their instantly
recognisable signature, L/B, serves as a kind of trademark, “a
sign indicating control”, as one might concisely define it.
But L/B does not stand for one of those impeccably marketed
art multinationals that market their spin-offs in all the
right emporia; rather, this is little family firm that
jealously guards the secrets of its production. And their
production is meticulous, not something rattled off on a
frantic assembly line; it is made to measure, and nothing is
subcontracted. It all starts in an old factory in Burgdorf, a
small town in German-speaking Switzerland where green pastures
and industry cohabit. The place is a cooperative, combining
production, design and family life. Some may consider the
model a bit shop-worn and unproductive, but for Sabina Lang
and Daniel Baumann this is where they work towards the
modestly utopian construction of a world that is more
beautiful, gentler, rounder and more colourful, while at the
same time elaborating their radical and rigorous art. They are
relaxed about embracing the forms and motifs of their
childhood, those of the 1960s, without lapsing into nostalgia
or reaction. References to the past are part of a strategy
based on using familiar signs that link simultaneously to
personal experience and the collective imagination. The
artists seem to share the spirit of that age in which faith in
the future and the breaking down of barriers between artistic
disciplines combined with an uninhibited assimilation of
popular culture; a time when music, architecture, art, design
and social sciences moved forward together to the benefit of
art. L/B respond to the disenchantment of the noughties with
their “beautiful entrance”, their “beautiful walls”, their
“beautiful lounges”, their “beautiful windows” and their
“Spielfeld” (play area). For them, designing a bar, a table
football set, a snooker table or even a hotel room holds the
promise of a unique aesthetic experience. Touching, using or
inhabiting their spaces – their works are like invitations
addressed to the spectator. The relational codes pertaining to
relaxation, well-being and play are not an end in themselves
but a simple and fresh means of access to the work through
hedonistic exchange.
The
materials and forms are chosen for the visual and functional
qualities. The carpeting is soft, and has a considerable
effect on the acoustics. The bright, plastic surfaces change
the way we perceive dimensions and distances. The wall
paintings and installations favour overlooking views, angles
and kinetic motifs in order to heighten the effect of
disorientation. L/B work by covering over what already exists
(walls, roads, sports grounds). They act on the surface. Their
all-over practice allows them to go beyond the wall as
exhibition area and make free use of the floor, ceiling and
furniture in their conception of environments. Their
“beautiful walls” enact the transition from surface to volume,
from two dimensions to three-dimensional space.
Neither besotted nor blind, Lang and Baumann are very
much artists of their times. They perfectly master the
potential of the forms they use and articulate their social
and political corollaries (a wind of freedom and a belief in
the capacity of politics to change society). Where design
plays on seriality and wide distribution, L/B propose works
that inflect commercial logics. The Hotel Everland consists of
a single room. To reserve it, a potential client will have
more need of persistence than of money. Where architecture is
built and conceived in the long term, L/B’s environments place
the emphasis on ephemeral forms linked to pre-existing
architectural spaces, notably the white cube. In materialising
their pragmatic vision of exhibition spaces and their
habitability, L/B dispel all ambiguity: for them, the everyday
experience of architecture and design will always be an art,
and not a function in lieu of an eventual utopia.
-
Yann Chevallier, T(e)xtes, éditions Loevenbruck, Paris
2009.
Sabina Lang (born 1972 in Bern,
Switzerland) and Daniel Baumann (born 1967 in
San Francisco, CA, USA) live and work in Burgdorf,
Switzerland. Recent exhibitions: 2010, Street Painting #5, R &
Art, Vercorin, Switzerland; Lang/Baumann, Galeria Foksal,
Warsaw, Poland; 2009, I’m Real, Urs Meile Gallery, Beijing,
China; 2007-2009, Hotel Everland, Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
Monumental works
by Lang/Baumann have featured in the following recent group
shows: 2011, Luftkunst, Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen,
Germany; Of Bridges & Borders, Fundacion Proa & Puente
Figueroa Alcorta, Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina; 2010,
Regionale. Fabricators of the World. Scenarios of Self-Will,
Trautenfels Castle, Pürgg-Trautenfels, Austria, Fukutake
House, Setouchi International Art Festival 2010, Kagawa,
Japan. Works by Lang/Baumann are held in numerous public
collections in Switzerland.
In
France, their installation Street Painting #4 (2010) entered
the Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain, Paris, in 2010 and
their sculpture Childish Behavior #3 (2000) was acquired by
the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in 2009.
GALERIE LOEVENBRUCK
6, rue
Jacques Callot
F -
75006 Paris
France
T +33
(0) 1 53 10 85 68
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