莊萃瑋：纏繞消散大氣層
Kara CHIN: Twisting the Air with Unseen Tendrils
11am – 11pm
On farmland fields
behind the residential
neighborhood of Bruderholz
Previous editions of Basel Social Club
LINSEED 很高兴地参加第三届巴塞尔社交俱乐部（Basel Social Club 2024），呈现出生于新加坡，现居英国纽卡斯尔的艺术家庄萃玮（Kara CHIN，b.1994）的互动项目《缠绕消散大气层》（Twisting the Air with Unseen Tendrils）。巴塞尔社交俱乐部（BSC）是一个旨在为艺术创造社会空间的组织，今年的BSC活动将在巴塞尔城市边缘的布鲁德霍尔茨区（Bruderholz）与郊外森林之间的农业用地中举行，展出的作品与生态环境相容、与当地空间相处。通过一系列互动装置，庄萃玮的作品试图重新审视一种不止于人，而是与环境所共同面临的过去、现在和未来的复杂关系。
带有顶篷的三件装置作品整齐地列队，矮几上似乎正在自助零售即时纹身贴与毛巾，与农场集市里兜售农作物的摊位发生着奇妙的反应。在田园牧歌一片郁郁葱葱与蛀蚀木板和生锈金属之间，这些作品像是光滑的瓷器、毫无使用痕迹的尼龙绳和在地收集的家具都显得有些格格不入。因为这些东西的表面好像不会因为温度、湿度或时间产生任何的变化。它们虽然远比农场里的任何东西都要来的年轻，但这些东西的横空出世好像就是为了超越所有的寿命。艺术家的作品中常常透着一股不会腐烂、不会积灰、甚至是完全真空的异常氛围。在这样的装置面前，我们或许都不会询问这里面的东西是什么时候摆在这里的，这个喷泉小机关是什么时候开始循环的。
在这个似乎没有时间性的空间里，桌上的三个器皿略带艺术家标志性的芜杂装饰。不论是整体动物造型的器皿还是像是宫殿建筑缩影的人形支脚，都唤起古代器皿中的仪式性。指向中心的陈列方式，让三件装置比起零售亭更像是三个神坛，售卖或供奉着的是艺术家过去作品中常常出现的征兆标志：古罗马占卜祭祀的权杖、末日电影中暗示灾难的晃动水杯，建筑上的通道标识。这其中大量的鸟类图案，不仅是艺术家发现鸟类的行为在古代神话和现代电影里作为吉凶之兆的异曲同工，也因为近期英国的海鸥更具侵略性的进入内陆抢夺食物。对艺术家而言，这样的古怪行迹不再指向某种神秘天象，而是与有人的环境中这里的缺陷、那里的破坏一齐进入了一个混乱却又注定的循环。未来不是一种出乎意外，反倒是跟人类绑定的将来。
庄萃玮 Kara Chin
在作品看似属于未来的真空无人中，危机四伏。好像是并没有事先做好完备的对称设计，才只能将顶棚添置在桌子的一侧，透明的雨伞也无法真正阻挡暴晒或是雨淋。沙袋、尼龙绳，诸如此类的加固用品为即将来临的洪流和风暴做准备。同时，这也暗示着一种处理现在的方式：以对将来的认知来理解正所处。然而对将来的认知，就好像这三位农场里的天外来物，时常显得有些笨拙。正如艺术家所说，过去对未来所产生涟漪效应像孢子一样扩散繁殖。当我们在对未来的设想沾沾自喜时，过去、现在、未来却并不是什么线性关系。
纹身贴纸、毛巾、刺绣、包、仿真薯条、丝带
Tattoo Sticker, towel, embroidery, synthetic french fries, ribbon
限量套装 Limited edition
关于巴塞尔社交俱乐部
巴塞尔社交俱乐部（Basel Social Club）于2022年成立，是一个由艺术家、画廊主和策展人共同创建的组织，旨在为艺术创造社交空间。
继前两届分别在1930年代别墅、前蛋黄酱工厂的成功举办，巴塞尔社交俱乐部今年将以全新的地点和形式回归，开启第三届活动。
巴塞尔社交俱乐部2024将于6月9日（星期日）至6月16日（星期日）在位于森林和城市边缘间72公顷的农场举行，汇集众多本地和国际艺术家的艺术创作, 与生态环境相容、与当地空间相处，同时带来充满活力的音乐和行为表演、露天电影院和美食。
呼应此次项目的生态主题，艺术的介入将遍布整个庄园，在田野上、谷仓里、树丛中呈现。项目将与在地景观、农业和农场动物融为一体，当地农场主也将积极参与其中，并欢迎所有人前来体验。
庄萃玮 Kara CHIN
LINSEED is pleased to present British-Singaporean artist Kara CHIN’s (b.1994, Singapore) solo project “Twisting the Air with Unseen Tendrils” at the third edition of Basel Social Club from 9-16 Jun 2024. Basel Social Club is a non-for-profit organization with the intention of creating social spaces for art. This year, the event takes place in the 72 hectares of farmed land between a forest and the residential neighborhood of Bruderholz, the border of the city, bringing together artworks responding to the ecological scope while resonating with the local surroundings. With a suite of three interactive installations, Chin’s work reflects upon our relationship with the environment that leads to an alternative way of understanding the past, present and future.
Lined up each with a tabletop canopy, the three installations, two of which function as self-serve stands selling stickers and towels, lovely echo with the roadside farm stalls in the market. Amid the bucolic scene of the lushness, the rotten wood and rusting metal, the prevalence of glossy plastics, unblemished nylon ropes, and Scandinavian-modern furniture in Chin’s works seems ill-timed. These kinds of material defy the fluctuation of temperature, humidity, or the relentless flow of time. Far younger than anything else on the farm, these kinds of materials and productions yet embrace characteristics that contribute to their great longevity. The artist's work often exudes a non-rotting and dust-inhibiting quality, which is intoxicating as if they are situated in a complete vacuum. As such, questions will not be raised of when the stands were placed here; when the little fountain contraption started to circulate.
Within a space seemingly devoid of time, three vessels are enchantingly adorned. In the form of animal effigies or with legs in figural shapes epitomizing sacred architectures, these pieces call forth vessels’ ritual aspects surveyed in anthropology. Structurally reinforcing the center of the display, the installations seem like enshrining the stickers and towels with omen signs often incorporated in Chin’s work: the spiral wands in the practice of Roman augury, the wobbling cup of water implying the imminent catastrophe in the movies, and the passageway signs on the buildings. As for the bird motifs—in the worship of which she finds a riveting resonation between ancient myths and modern apocalyptic movies, they respond to the recent increase of aggressive seagulls in Britain moving inland and stealing the food, often the chips. Divergent from a cosmic metaphor foreboding the unpredictable future, the birds’ befuddling behavior, for the artist, is a part of the doomed cycle resulting from our relationship with the environment. The future is not something beyond imagination, but rather something yet to come.
Crisis lurks in Chin's seemingly utopian vacuum. The symmetry at first glance is a deceptive. Each transparent umbrella, rather than a center post, is attached to one side of the table barely protecting the altar from the sun and the rain. Accessories like piles of sandbags and strong nylon ropes in these works gesture towards forthcoming storms and floods, while also suggesting a way of understanding the present that is predicated on the knowledge of the future. Yet our vision for the future, like these three farmyard aliens, often seems a bit clumsy. The past ripples and “fans out”, as the artist puts it, “like spores” that often go beyond the linearity between the past, present, and future.
About the Basel Social Club
Basel Social Club is a non-for-profit organization founded in spring 2022 by a collective of artists, gallerists and curators with the intention of creating social spaces for art.
After the success of the past two editions (2022 in a 1930s villa in Bruderholz, 2023 in a former Thomy Mayonnaise Factory), Basel Social Club returns this year for its third edition in a new location and new format: a week-long event in the midst of nature on farmland fields behind the residential neighborhood of Bruderholz, extending into Baselland.
Sprawled throughout the 72 hectares of farmed land between a forest and the border of the city, Basel Social Club 2024 will bring together an all-encompassing exhibition of artworks by a diverse list of local and international artists. Adapted to the environment and respectful of the local activities, Basel Social Club 2024 is accompanied by a dynamic music and performance program, an outdoor cinema, and exclusive culinary offerings.
The landscape, agriculture, and farm animals will be integrated into the project, with our host farmers as active participants. Artistic interventions will be positioned throughout the properties, presented on the fields, in the barns, amongst the trees, and responding to the ecological scope of this year’s project, while merging with the agricultural landscape.
Basel Social Club will run from Sunday, June 9th until Sunday, June 16th, and will be accessible to all and free of charge.
About the Artist
Kara CHIN was born in Singapore in 1994. Chin obtained her BA in Fine Art from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2018, and currently lives and works in Newcastle, UK. Her practices, spanning animation, ceramics, sculpture, and installation, attempt to unravel our relationship with technology that has assimilated into every corner of the quotidian life. Working with different materials from the organic to the synthetic or even ‘digital manifestations’, Chin reexamines perception and deception in the increasingly virtualized world. By interweaving imagined future scenarios with primitive and esoteric events, her work reflects upon the psychology behind biohacking, wellness culture, and transhumanism. With injections of humor delivered through unconventional materials, chaotic compositions, and bizarre fabrications, Chin explores how the present is haunted by the future.
Her recent solo exhibitions and projects include: “Twisting the Air with Unseen Tendrils”, 2024, Basel Social Club with LINSEED, Basel; “Shh the Film Is Starting”, 2024, Art Basel Hong Kong with LINSEED, Hong Kong; “Flames Painted on the Backcloth”, 2023, Frieze London with VITRINE, London; “Concerned Dogs”, 2023, Goldsmiths CCA, London; “Showreel”, 2022, Humber Street Gallery, Hull; “Fountain of Youth”, 2021, Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London; “You Will Knead”, 2021, VITRINE, London; “You Will Knead”, 2021, VITRINE Digital; “Blue Screen of Death”, 2020, Off-Site Project, digital; “Sentient Mecha Furniture”, 2020, BALTIC39, Newcastle; “Subsequent Hotchpotch”, 2020, DKUK, London. Her recent group exhibitions include: “Nurturing Nodes in the Nook of an Odd Sock”, 2024, The Miyauchi Art Foundation, Hiroshima; “life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot”, 2024, CCA Glasgow, Glasgow; “Voyager 1", 2023, Hive Becoming, Shanghai; “Wailing Moon”, 2023, Staffordshire St., London; “New Eden”, 2023, ArtScience Museum, Singapore; “Swallow Mountain, Drain Sea”, 2023, LINSEED, Shanghai; “Splendor of the Sun”, 2023, Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong; “FILM-Fabricated Realities”, 2023, ART SG, LINSEED, Singapore; “Garage Band: Architects of the Future”, 2022, HATCH, Paris; “Information Wants to Be Free?”, 2022, ADM Gallery, Singapore; “Acting on Behalf of Thinking”, 2021, PINK, Manchester; “The Sun and the Moon”, 2021, VITRINE, Basel; “A Letter to the Future”, 2021, EKO 8 International Triennial of Art and Environment, Maribor; “Springseason”, 2020, Fieldworks Gallery, London; “This is a Not Me”, 2020, IMT Gallery, digital; “Bloomberg New Contemporaries”, 2019, South London Gallery, London; “The Woon Foundation Painting and Sculpture Prize”, 2018, Gallery North, Newcastle; “Bloomberg New Contemporaries”, 2018, Liverpool Biennial 2018, Liverpool.
Kara Chin's work is held in notable collections including Arts Council Collection, UK; Government Art Collection, UK and is included in private collections internationally.
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