LISTE 2015: EXILE – Art Viewer

Artists: Nathalie Du Pasquier, Aggtelek, Erik Niedling, Katharina Marszewski, Martin Kohout, Patrick Panetta

Venue: EXILE at LISTE 2015, Basel, Switzerland

Date: June 15 – 21, 2015

Photography: images courtesy of the artists and EXILE

EXILE’S group presentation at LISTE art fair re-envisions the exhibition Homo Decorans from 1985.

Homo Decorans – det dekorerende menneske was an exhibition at The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark in 1985 featuring works by architects, designers, folk and craft artists as well as fine artists. Among the participants were Mario Botta, George Sowden, Aldo Rossi, Michele de Lucchi, Keith Haring, and Nathalie Du Pasquier. The exhibition’s title and concept referenced the book Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga from 1938. In line with Homo Ludens, the exhibition Homo Decorans focused on the post-modern use of material, aesthetic and referential sampling with a certain playful expression at its core.

The grandiose, more than eight meters long painting Viva Pertini by Nathalie Du Pasquier from this particular exhibition forms the visual back-drop and historical link. Viva Pertini, which is one of du Pasquier’s earliest and certainly largest paintings, has not been seen in public since exhibited in a room alongside a mural by Keith Haring as part of Homo Decorans. Now, reconfigured through the works of a younger generation of artists, all works collectively emerge as a re-sampled collage of art works that reflects upon the painting’s expressive contend as well as the cross-disciplinary approach of Homo Decorans: at the core of all works on display stands a playful and personal creative expression without discursive limitation and boundary.