Aline Zeltner: Heute ist ein guter Tag für einen Ausflug / Artachment Art Space Basel

Aline Zeltner: Heute ist ein guter Tag für einen Ausflug (Today is a good day for an excursion). Solo exhibition at Artachment Art Space Basel. Basel (Switzerland), Vernissage, August 31, 2024.

To Aline Zeltner, it is obvious that nothing is obvious – this includes the fact that there can actually be no explanatory text for her work: ‘I am interested in what happens between ambiguity and clarity, in the moment when everything is still possible and not the one thing.’ But: it’s a good day for an outing, so we want to go on a journey to explore the artist’s world.

We as viewers stand somewhat awkwardly and unsuspectingly at the large window front, the view of the inside obscured as if by thick fog. Only above our eye level, in the upper part of the large glass pane, does the artist offer us with a chance for a direct view of the inside. Jumping or dancing on tiptoe, we catch glimpses and thus become a performative part of the exhibition.

Tentative sounds can be heard from inside. A waltz played on the piano? Are we mistaken? From the outside, in front of the window, we see nothing concrete, a few silhouettes right next to the window at most, but they remain impossible to identify. Our senses, our sight and hearing remain blurred, diffuse, limited, shielded by the window. At the same time, our concentration and focus on deciphering the enigmatic interior space allows our immediate surroundings to fade into the background, obscuring and veiling their perception.

Aline Zeltner’s installation plays with our expectations, the deeply human urge to explore, the will to perceive our environment, to understand it, to make it tangible. And yet, despite entering and approaching the inner world of the installation, the mystery, the enigma remains.

So we leave the exhibition, step out into the world and all that we have previously experienced with our eyes and ears, with all our senses, remains in our memory. But even here the clarity of vision is already fading again, overshadowed by new impressions. The excursion into Aline Zeltner’s world is one into the world of our own perception – as John Locke put it: ‘Nothing exists in the mind that previously was not in the senses.’

Niels ten Brink

— Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.

Posted in: art, Basel, interview