Mélodie Mousset, Ralph Bürgin, Senam Okudzeto

Mélodie Mousset: L'épluchée
October 27, 2019–February 2, 2020
Opening: October 26, 6–9pm

Mélodie Mousset (b. 1981, Abu Dhabi, based in Zurich) uses her own body to map, index and narrate a "self" that seems to be constantly metamorphosing, eluding her whenever she tries to take possession of it. She is interested in the individual and collective biological, technical and cultural individuation processes that form the human body. These anthropological and philosophical inquiries take the form of videos, sculptures, installations, performances and virtual reality. Appropriating medical imaging technologies (MRI, 3D printing) for these purposes, she ties them into shamanic rites and combines them with sculptural work.

Mélodie Mousset's practice also reflects disturbing developments in the contemporary world we live in: a digital reality that tracks, records and analyses each individual’s movements, consumption behavior and even desires, thereby creating "transparent citizens." This environment of overexposure is at odds with human bodies, which are alive, opaque, imperfect, filled with organs, psychic interiority and minds with hidden recesses abounding in imagination. As US writer and filmmaker Chris Kraus puts it in ArtReview, "Mousset’s associative process is so rich. She fully believes in her own imagination, and the logical or alogical digressions that shape an inner life."
 
Two related events:
“Where Bodies Meet: Public and Virtual Spaces”
October 26, 1–5pm

“Where Bodies Meet: Machinima”
February 1, 1–5pm


Ralph Bürgin: La place
October 27–December 8, 2019
Opening: October 26, 6–9pm

Ralph Bürgin (b. 1980 in Basel) is a painter who is continually testing the representation of the body within the ostensibly limited space of oil on canvas. What is the relationship between the canvas and the human body, two entities so different in shape and dimensions, in materiality and temporality, and with such different needs for their own survival?

In distorting the bodies’ dimensions Bürgin questions the relationship, perhaps even the balance of power, between these giants and their viewers. His nudes are heavy and monumental, passive and unproductive. Their eyes stare out expressionlessly at nothing, at no one. The hermeticism of this pictorial world, its resistance to any connection with a world outside the canvas, its utter lack of interest in reality, speaks volumes about the present day and age and makes Bürgin’s work deeply contemporary.


Senam Okudzeto: We Wanted the Object to be the Subject (Before We Wanted the Reverse)
December 15, 2019–February 16, 2020
Opening: December 14, 6–9pm

Senam Okudzeto is a British-American artist of US and Ghanaian descent who lives in Switzerland (b. Chicago 1972). Her work bridges writing, research and formal artistic practice. Utilizing paintings, video, sculpture and installation, she forges narrative connections between bodies, objects and architecture through an "Afro-Dada" aesthetic. Her installations, films, drawings and sculptures are designed to represent forgotten or unnoticed forms of material and architectural culture as carriers of lost or hidden histories, especially stories about the genesis of contemporary West Africa and its diaspora. Recurring themes include ideas such as economics as an archive of social relations and readings of Lacan in relation to race, performance and the gendered body. These "conversations" take place within a theoretical discourse on feminism, African modernity and a general analysis of material culture.