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MARINE PINSKY, installation view Dyed Channel, view on Landscape (Pharmakon I–XXIV), 2014–15, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. photo: PHILIPP HÄNGER

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Pharmakon XVI, 2015 (detail)
photo: HUGARD & VANOVERSCHELDE

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MARINE PINSKY, installation view Dyed Channel, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016
photo: PHILIPP HÄNGER

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MARINE PINSKY, installation view Dyed Channel, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016
photo: PHILIPP HÄNGER

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MARINE PINSKY, installation view Dyed Channel, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016
photo: PHILIPP HÄNGER

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MARINE PINSKY, installation view Dyed Channel, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016
photo: PHILIPP HÄNGER

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MARINE PINSKY, installation view Dyed Channel, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016
photo: PHILIPP HÄNGER

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MARINA PINSKY‘s solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel brings in light three domains closely tied to the city’s power structure, namely architecture, pharmaceutical industry and culture. For this show entitled Dyed Channel, PINSKY took up the opportunity to explore in depth the formal research by visiting various museums and sites in the city.

In particular, PINSKY focused on a certain number of objects which have to do with the region’s pharmaceutical past and present. Perhaps the most obvious work is Landscape (Pharmakon I–XXIV) (2014–15). It consists of a series of oversized pill tablets laying on the floor or leaned against the walls. The sculptural pieces contain soft colored ceramic pills onto which are imprinted the contours of some architectural views from Basel. The materiality, the color as well as the texture of the sculptures recall the pastilles of sealed earth produced around 500 B.C by pharmacists in the belief that, if ingested, they could absorb toxins in the body.

Nevertheless the works of MARINA PINSKY even connected in her original sources to Basel, evade historical or sociological linearity in favor of an approach based on free associations. In the fourth room for example, she sets up a dialogue between two works; Decoy (2014) and the series of prints entitled Rhine Riverbed (2015). The photographs consist of pictures the artist took in the Rhine and which are overlaid with found images of Swiss fish specimens. According to the press release, these images surround ‘Decoy, a scale model of a boat that the artist once saw in a decoy museum, covered in imitation ducks and with a lowered hatch meant to hide a duck hunter. In her copy of this strange lure, the artist has hidden a cellphone jammer.’ Once again the layered semantic structure makes way for a rather humorous and yet absurd approach.

Thanks to precise assemblages of critical gestures and forms, Dyed Channel seems to question state power, corporate power and finally art-historical power that not only shape the Basler landscape but also form in a more global sense the contemporary art scene.

Dyed Channel by MARINA PINSKY is on view at Kunsthalle Basel until April 10, 2016

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