NADINE CUENI – Klimax

Cordial invitation to the opening:
Friday, October 18, 6 p.m.
Exhibition period: 19.10. - 21.12.24

It is only through the human perspective that nature becomes a landscape, that a forest becomes a primeval forest, a climax, a temple of equilibrium in which content can be inscribed. In biology, the climax after a succession is referred to as the climax. Primeval forests are in climax, they exist today only as a relic tolerated by man - as an anthropological construction. The stability of the apparent equilibrium of a primeval forest lies in its instability. Constant degradation, decay, reconstruction and reorganization go hand in hand. A never-finished state, an eternal construction site.

The multimedia installation by artist and biologist Nadine Cueni interweaves a digital post-natural environment with the archaic primeval forest as the epitome of raw and untouched nature in Artstübli, in the middle of the hectic city of Basel.

In the speculative video essay, the viewer moves through an artificial film landscape of forest and architecture. The tracking shot through a digital forest temple shows images of “Scatlè”, a small piece of forest in Graubünden, probably one of the last primeval forests in Switzerland. “Scatlè” means ‘nested’, and the spruce forest is indeed nested and difficult to access due to steep rocky slopes, scree fields and avalanche tracks. The forest owes its existence to its unattractiveness to humans - it has never been used or cut down.

The room contains architectural elements and transparent curtains with forest prints framed by spherical sounds; at the same time, scaffolding and piles of building rubble refer to an atmosphere of chaos and upheaval.

The exhibition was realized in collaboration with Marco Papiro, Robin Michel, Simon Wyss and Andreas Muster.

Opening hours
Thu, Fri: 11 am - 6 pm; Sat 2 pm - 6 pm
Artstübli - Art & Culture, Steinentorberg 28, Basel