Delphine Reist: ÖL [oil, olio, huile]

From October 18, 2023 to January 14, 2024, Museum Tinguely presents a solo show of works by Delphine Reist (b. 1970) under the title ÖL [oil, olio, huile], focussing on her artistic engagement with the theme of work. With her kinetic sculptures and large-scale installations, Reist explores the ways work structures the lives of individuals and of society as a whole. In Basel, she will also present several works that feature oil and its fascinating fluid, viscous qualities, exploring its roles as a lubricant, a painting medium, and not least as an energy source. The exhibition includes both re-installations of works from the period 2007–2022 and seven new works made specifically for the show.

In Delphine Reist’s works, objects take on a life of their own: suddenly noisy drills, leaky printers, window blinds controlled by an invisible hand. They offer their views on the movement and rhythm of production, or speak of efficiency and exhaustion. In installations made using tyres, tools and buckets, the artist refers to handcraft and industrial labour—the latter, once massively relocated to low-wage countries, is now receiving renewed attention as part of discussions around overdependency on other states. In her video Averse, neon tubes fall one by one from the ceiling of an empty industrial space: in both real and figurative senses, the lights go out.

Other works address the theme of office work. Here, it is objects of material infrastructure like colour printers, window blinds in perpetual random motion, or the marks left by endlessly circling office chairs that are used to critically reflect on forms of physically and intellectually alienated labour. Reist’s breathing sports bags remind us: under neoliberal capitalism, the benefits of “fitness”, “self-care” and “wellbeing” have been coopted by the world of work as means of increasing efficiency and creating resilience to burnouts.

In her installation Huiles (2022), Reist questions the basis of our entire economy. Many red barrels stand in line. But they are not properly sealed. Drop by drop, trickles of fuel oil, motor oil, and vegetable oil run down the white wall, leaving painterly traces. At the same time, the work is an abstract portrait in oil, as the artist uses liquids with regional links: in Basel these include sunflower oil and used motor oil from helicopters.

This implicit reference to a classical art genre is not the only one of its kind, another example being the above-mentioned leaky printer Cartouches (2020). Reist shows it to us in the form of a photograph (C-Print)—appropriately enough (for a reprographic device) in duplicate.

The exhibition concludes with the installation Plateformes (2023), made especially for the show with reference to the neighbouring open conservation workshop called Schauatelier. Inspired by the ladders and footstools used by the Museum’s restoration team, Reist created an installation in which the objects develop their own agency, spinning around the exhibition space in a never-ending dance.

Delphine Reist (born 1970 in Sion, Switzerland) lives and works in Geneva. She won the Swiss Art Award in 2008 and the Prix de la Fondation Irène Reymond. She has taught at ENSBA de Lyon and currently teaches at HEAD in Geneva. Her works have recently been featured, among others, in major solo shows at FRAC Grand Large, Dunkirk (2022) and Centre d’Art Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (2017).

Curator: Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann