LUCERNE.- It is possible to outline the caesurae of the 20th century by referencing the life and career of the artist Marion Baruch (*1929) in Romania, Israel, Italy, Great Britain and France: fascism, communism, capitalism, feminism, pacifism, migration, social classes, nations, religions, language communities, political ideologies. Through her art, Baruch addresses social themes and observes inner worlds and outer spaces. innenausseninnen is an immediately understandable term she has coined, it is just that here “aussen” (outside) is “innen” (inside). Language is central to Baruch’s work. innenausseninnen designates a search for a perspective, an experimental set up assessing the mechanisms of integration and/or exclusion.
For her project Une chambre vide (2009) the artist cleared out a room in her small apartment in Paris so that she could invite people in to talk every afternoon over the course of a month. The room may have been empty, but otherwise it contained everything: openness, curiosity, the chance element of the exchange, the warm sunlight. For this retrospective, one of the exhibition rooms will also remain empty; this “empty chamber” will be the venue for a loose series of encounters, discussions and lectures for the exhibition visitors.
Baruch’s first steel sculptures, dating from 1966, are accessible, filigree drawings in outdoor space. A historical photograph shows the artist in a gymnast’s pose between the steel girders. It is permitted to touch and even use these sculptures. They are playful, and their dimensions are aligned with those of the human body. Inside and outside intertwine. We are neither inside nor outside. Baruch’s art involves creating this inviting openness. The objects Ron Ron (1972) and Lorenz (1972) are a kind of useless furniture, toys in the context of an adult’s apartment furnishings: neither quite a carpet, nor quite a stool, they are an invitation to us to grant more space to our senses.
In 1988 Baruch began to respond critically to the art market with the label NAME DIFFUSION, which means distributing, sharing with one another as a principle, but not as a dogma. NAME DIFFUSION is listed as a company in the commercial register and, as an artists’ collective, realises art projects and actions in the business sector. The supposedly different systems become confused. Of course, this is both playing with and criticising the system, rendering job structures, social classes or market mechanism visible, as well as taking delight in experimentation.
Formally speaking, many of Baruch’s most recent works are so strong that the thematic complexity is almost concealed behind their minimal aesthetic. Using left-overs from the textile industry she again addresses the theme of the workaday world and the use of resources. Above all, the twisted and stretched textile remnants again mainly create accessible images. Seen in formal terms, the artist likes to work with empty spaces, through views, transparency, omissions. She herself speaks of the “void”, although by this she does not mean a spiritual nothingness. Instead, this void is a free space in the literal sense, to be understood as an invitation to the visitors to enter it. The artist herself, and we who are standing in front of and in her work, experience the transformation of the visible into the invisible physically; we are inside and outside at one and the same time.
Curated by Fanni Fetzer and Noah Stolz.
