Fall 2022 exhibitions

Maude Léonard-Contant: Digs
September 9—November 13, 2022
The title of the exhibition says it all: it is about digging something up, in a figurative sense; bringing something to light that until now has tended to lie hidden, beneath the surface, beneath the obvious. For many years, the Basel-based artist, who is originally from Francophone Canada, has been interested in spaces that make language possible, change it, or even close it off. At the same time, she reflects on the representability of language, its ability to name and its need to exclude, but also its changed meaning at the point that it is translated into another language and thus into another culture. Consequently, this exhibition of Maude Léonard-Contant’s (b. 1979, Canada) works is not a conclusive statement, but rather a place of listening, invitation and transformation; a place that allows the materials to become part of the language—a succession of spaces and times, accompanied by the artist, who adopts a different stance with each visit to the exhibition—and actively includes the audience in the process.

Maude Léonard-Contant will be on site regularly during the exhibition to continue the work.

Werner von Mutzenbecher
September 9—November 13, 2022
Werner von Mutzenbecher (b. 1937, Germany), has been one of the main protagonists of the Basel cultural scene since the early 1970s—both as an artist and a long-time teacher at the Basel School of Design, as well as through his interim leadership of Kunsthalle Basel in the 1970s. His works can be found in numerous public and private collections in Switzerland.

With work spanning more than sixty years, von Mutzenbecher has realized an oeuvre that not only includes painting and drawing, but also photography, film (16 mm and Super 8), video, and texts. The exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland demonstrates how the artist has approached these different techniques and mediums in parallel from the very beginning, as well as how he progressed within his oeuvre from narration to gestural painting to a strong formal vocabulary that is not only present in his painting but also in his film and photography. The works on display are a selection from all mediums and periods, from the late 1950s to the present day. 

The exhibition is accompanied by his first comprehensive monograph.

Kelly Tissot: Spurious Crops
September 23—November 13, 2022 
Since 2016, Kelly Tissot (b. 1995, France) has been working on photographic series that radically break away from a romantic image of the landscape or our perception of it. The French artist examines contradictions between the cultural and the natural, domesticity and wilderness, seclusion and community. Accompanied by sculptural structures that simultaneously fill and define the space, disorienting our traditional view of photography, there is something unsettling that often resonates in the artist’s work. Humans are only perceptible in her photographs and spatial volumes through the sense of scale and traces of civilization—through what they use, tame or try to control on a daily basis. Kelly Tissot transfers all these motifs into an ever-expanding archive of images that reveals the symbolic identity of the provincial. With newly realized works for her first comprehensive institutional solo exhibition curated by Ines Tondar, the artist proposes unfamiliar narratives and interrogates our own relationship with the rural.

New Kunsthaus Baselland
Remodeling work is steadily progressing on the future address of Kunsthaus Baselland. The new building will be erected in the Dreispitz area near Basel by the end of 2023, meeting the contemporary standards expected of an exhibition venue. The final demolition stages are now being completed. Builders are busy working on the first ground-floor walls and getting everything ready for the construction of the project’s three triangular towers. At a later stage, they will pierce through the roof of the existing hall and allow natural light to flood the interior. To this end, the low-pitched roof has been opened up to expose the steel frame.

Please visit our website to keep up to date on the building progress.

Director/Curator: Ines Goldbach  
Director’s Assistant: Martina Stähli
Communications, Publications and Assistant Curator: Ines Tondar
Organisation Office: Salome Tramèr
Education: Meret Glausen

Many thanks to the annual partners 2022: kulturelles.bl, Burckhardt + Partner, Gemeinde Muttenz, Anthony Vischer, and to those who wish to remain unnamed.

Many thanks to the sponsor of the exhibitions: Sophie und Karl Binding Stiftung, Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung, Pro Helvetia, Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung, Canada Council for the Arts, Embassy of Canada in Bern, Hans und Renée Müller-Meylan Stiftung, Ambassade de France en Suisse et au Liechtenstein