Statement

(Français plus bas)

ENG
Born 1981 in France. Lives and works between Basel, Berlin and the french Jura

For a few years now, Sylvain Baumann has been interested in the design of our living environments as it refers to a political practice of modern living society. Working in a variety of different media including sculpture, found objects as well as design items, photography, audio recordings and text, he conceives installations but also more recently publications and a virtual entity that provoke questions about what in the contemporary environment, influence our individual conducts – with more or less our consent. He understands contemporary environment to be a political and ideological means of contemporary society and he is interested in the motivations, ideas and mechanisms that produce this society: How does our physical environment – private and public – inform and transform us as individuals, our habits, our perception and experience, our ways of thinking and our desires, and how we form relationships with others. Rather than focussing on an analysis of human behaviour, he sees his work as an analysis of and a comment on the work of contemporary activities that aims at the design of the ‘world of tomorrow’.

His research has recently led him to develop his production according to an entrepreneurial structure. This approach, by the hindsight it gives, allows him to rethink the ways in which its production is included in the wider field of society, while becoming a tool for investigating the problems of self-representation, the borderline between rationalisation and madness, the confusion between assistance and control, between supply and demand, between trust and defiance, between promise for the future and fulfilment in the present.

Sylvain Baumann holds two MA degrees, from the Université d’Aix-en-Provence and from the Université de Québec à Montréal. His works have been featured in numerous exhibitions, including Kunsthalle Basel (CH), Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal and Kunandu Museum of Fine Art in Taipei. His practice also includes site-specific installations, for example for the iconic brutalist Baltfron Tower in London, the architectural office Dreier Frenzel in Lausanne (CH) or for a shopping mall in Donetzk (UKR). He collaborate regularly with artists, architects, choreographers and writers.


FR
Né en 1981, vit et travaille entre le Jura français, Bâle et Berlin

Artiste plasticien multidisciplinaire, Sylvain Baumann s’intéresse au design de nos milieux de vie en tant qu’il renvoie à une pratique politique de la société vivante moderne. Ses installations, sculptures, photographies, interventions dans l’espace public ou publications, sont autant de réflexions sur ce qui, dans notre environnement quotidien, prend part plus ou moins lisiblement et avec plus ou moins notre consentement, à l’élaboration de nos conduites individuelles.

Ses recherches l’on amené récemment à développer sa production à l’aune d’une structure entrepreneuriale. Cette démarche, par le recul qu’elle donne, lui permet de repenser les modalités d’inscription de sa production dans le champ élargi de la société, tout en devenant un outil d’investigation de problématiques telles que celles de l’auto-représentation, de la frontière entre rationalisation et folie, de la confusion entre assistance et contrôle, entre offre et demande, entre confiance et défiance, entre promesse au futur et réalisation au présent.

Son travail a été présenté dans de multiples institutions dont la Kunsthalle Basel (CH), le Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (CAN), le Kuandu Museum of Fine Art de Taipei (Taiwan), le Kunstverein de Freiburg, le Centquatre à Paris, le Kunsthaus Baselland à Bâle, ou encore au SAM Museum of Architecture Basel. Sa pratique est aussi in situ, comme le projet d’écriture réalisée sur les murs d’un appartement de la célèbre Balfron Tower de Londres, ou le monument lumineux installé au derniers étage d’un centre commerciale de Donetzk à l’occasion du vingtième anniversaire de l’entreprise propriétaire. Il collabore régulièrement avec différents artistes, architectes, chorégraphes et écrivains.