Yngve Holen

VERTICALSEAT

Yngve Holen, installation view, VERTICALSEAT, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy Yngve Holen; Galerie Neu, Berlin; Modern Art, London; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt/M. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Yngve Holen, VERTICALSEAT, view on Hater Headlight, 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy Yngve Holen; Galerie Neu, Berlin; Modern Art, London; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt/M. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Yngve Holen, VERTICALSEAT, view on Hater Headlight, 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy Yngve Holen; Galerie Neu, Berlin; Modern Art, London; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt/M. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Yngve Holen and Aedrhlsomrs Othryutupt Lauecehrofn, installation view, VERTICALSEAT, view on 13 7E 2C 35 D7 16 32 9A FB 07 27 12 E1 B5 2D 16 7F 19 8D 69 D8 E8 8A 18 A3 97 7A 57 7B 14 4C 8D 0E FE 39 92 1E E1 3A 66 8A E1 1E D4 5E 2A 35 13 21 5F 20 BE 2A BD A6 9B EB 39 BA 67 AA BA E8 F6, 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy the artists. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Yngve Holen, installation view, VERTICALSEAT, view on CAKE, 2016, and Window seat 10–21 A, 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy Yngve Holen; Galerie Neu, Berlin; Modern Art, London; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt/M. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Yngve Holen, installation view, VERTICALSEAT, view on CAKE, 2016, and Window seat 10–21 A, 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy Yngve Holen; Galerie Neu, Berlin; Modern Art, London; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt/M. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Yngve Holen, VERTICALSEAT, view on Window seat 1–2 A, 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy Yngve Holen; Galerie Neu, Berlin; Modern Art, London; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt/M. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Yngve Holen, VERTICALSEAT, view on Taxi B-QK 9999 kommt innerhalb von 2 Minuten, 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy Yngve Holen; Galerie Neu, Berlin; Modern Art, London; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt/M. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Yngve Holen, poster for the exhibition, VERTICALSEAT, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Design: Per Törnberg

Exhibition text and related events (PDF)
Press images (ZIP)

Gewaltig unter Druck, Basler Zeitung (05/2016)
Wenn Maschinen hassen, art – Das Kunstmagazin (07/2016)
Critics’ Picks, artforum International (07/2016)
Around Town: Basel, Frieze (07/2016)
Hi Machine!, Kunstkritikk (08/2016)
Eine Bildgeschichte der Ökonomie, Kunstforum International (08/2016)

The body, it is often said, is conspicuously absent from Yngve Holen’s (b. 1982) work. Everywhere in his oeuvre, however, the implications of the body—in all its subjectivity, messy corporeality, and imbrications in a culture of consumption—are evoked. This is visible in his persistent exploration of the technologies that define our everyday surroundings, from transportation and plastic surgery to food. For his largest institutional show to date, the Norwegian-German artist presents an array of new sculptures that magnify this questioning. They reveal an idiosyncratic material bias and a fascination with specific, mundane objects: glass hand-blown to evoke talismans cut into the shape of Boeing Dreamliner windows, readymade barriers and plastic medical imaging parts positioned like paintings, autobus headlights gleaming anthropomorphically, and even the ultimate object of desire for the nuclear family that also craves luxury and speed, the Porsche Panamera. Here, industrial objects, almost inhuman in their futuristic sheen, are sliced open, or re-presented in ways that raise questions about how humans and the human-made reconfigure each other in an age of technological acceleration. Featuring several major new commissions and a collaborative project between Holen and Aedrhlsomrs Othryutupt Lauecehrofn (b. 1986), the exhibition highlights Holen’s different approaches to thinking about the object and its absent but implicit human users.