BASEL.- The first institutional solo exhibition by Basel-based artist and musician Yanik Soland (b. 1990) is devoted to a multidisciplinary practice that spans sound, sculpture, and performance. At Kunsthaus Baselland, Soland has created a new exhibition that, for the first time, brings together his longstanding exploration of the intersections between sound, material, and space. It also asks how sound can be exhibited, how it can be made visible or experienced physically.
Centered on a new composition titled Walking on Rubber Eggshells, Yanik Soland has created an immersive sonic landscape that unfolds across the entire upper floor of Kunsthaus Baselland, extending through all three galleries. Sustained tones, flute melodies, sub-bass frequencies, and passages of percussion form its primary material, while the reverberation of the surrounding architecture becomes part of the sound itself. In his work as a composer, Soland is particularly interested in sounds that combine lightness with rawness. Over many years, he has built an extensive archive of recordings, rhythms, melodies, and field recordings, continually recombining, layering, and expanding them. Inviting other musicians and artists into the process has long been an integral part of his practice; together, they record new material, experiment, and improvise.
From the moment visitors enter the exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland, they are immersed in sound and bodily experience. A spatial intervention envelops them in a soft textile surface that begins to vibrate at irregular intervals. This physical experience reinforces what philosopher Salom Voegelin has described as fundamental to listening: “[…] There is no place where I am not simultaneously with the heard.”[1] While vision can, for example, operate from a position of distance, Voegelin argues that listeners always share space and time with what they hear. Soland’s installation makes this immediacy physically palpable: sounds are muffled, voices take on a different quality, and a sense of intimacy emerges.
For the exhibition, the tracks from an album created in preparation for the project—which will be released as an LP by Futura Resistenza in September 2026—are deconstructed and reassembled asynchronously. Listening more closely, visitors will discover not only guitar, vocals, and modular synthesizers, but also self-made instruments constructed from putty knives, steel wool, and rubber bands, as well as toys and rakes. Soland discovers sonic qualities in these ordinary, unassuming objects, mixing, amplifying, and combining their sounds. He also pushes traditional percussion instruments, drum machines, and flutes—as well as Japanese instruments such as the koto and shamisen—to their sonic limits, reinterpreting their conventional playing techniques.
At Kunsthaus Baselland, Soland has developed two new sculptural instruments specifically for the exhibition in collaboration with Basel-based artist Samuel Tschudin. Strings stretch through an exhibition wall and across clothespin-like structures, transforming the Kunsthaus itself into an instrument, as Soland makes no distinction between instrument, wall, and space. As freestanding sculptures, they invite visitors to move around them and experience their sounds from different positions within the gallery. Calibrated with extraordinary sensitivity, they respond to even the slightest movements and sounds throughout the exhibition. Inspired by one of the miniature instruments Soland built years ago from a tabletop Zen garden, these new works have been enlarged to an architectural scale, allowing performers to enter and play them. Despite their monumental scale, they retain a remarkable delicacy and simplicity, encouraging visitors to move carefully through the space and pause from time to time.
Here, the title Walking on Rubber Eggshells takes on particular resonance, evoking both fragility and resilience. Many of Soland’s visual works investigate the properties of materials and their hidden sonic potential. What does the rough surface of sandpaper sound like? How can wood or textiles become resonant bodies? How do glass and ceramics respond when struck? Together, these works reflect an ethic of care and attentiveness that shapes not only their making but also the way they are played and performed with others. Soland will activate the new instruments together with fellow performers during the exhibition opening (September 24) and in a solo performance on November 7. Both performances build on the sound installation while expanding its electronic soundscape with acoustic instruments, including flutes, percussion, and voice.
Walking on Rubber Eggshells is a testament to Soland’s tireless exploration of sound and his ability to uncover new, abstract qualities in an extraordinary range of objects, forms, and materials. Through improvisation and experimentation, he creates layered, ever-changing situations in which sound is experienced as something in constant flux, resisting fixed definitions and stable categories. The sculptural elements and drawings appear as delicate presences within the space, inviting multifaceted forms of listening while existing, both materially and spatially, between protection and vulnerability. Sound itself remains elusive yet profoundly connective, synchronizing us, if only for a moment, with everyone else who is listening. After all, listening allows no observational distance: we are always already within it.
Curated by Ines Tondar
[1] Salom Voegelin, Listening to Noise and Silence: Toward a Philosophy of Sound Art (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), xii.
