TRACES OF ABSENCE: Kostas Maros
Kostas Maros lives and works in Basel. In his photographic practice, he explores landscapes, urban spaces and traces of human presence. His works move between documentary observation and atmospheric density, focusing on places in which interventions, movements and transformations remain visible even after the people involved have long disappeared.
In the exhibition Traces of Absence, Maros brings together the two photographic series Myths of Everyday Life and Cicatrice. Both bodies of work revolve around landscapes as carriers of human activity and around the question of how time, use and transformation become inscribed into spaces. Light sources, architectural interventions, fences or altered surfaces become subtle indicators of past processes and forms of human influence.
Myths of Everyday Life moves between nocturnal urban scenes, tropical landscapes and everyday situations. The photographs create a dense, almost cinematic atmosphere in which absence appears just as present as what is visible itself. Objects, light and spatial constellations become carriers of open narratives and subtle tensions. The series Cicatrice focuses on the marble quarries of Carrara. The monumental cuts into the mountain landscape appear both fascinating and unsettling. Between geological time, industrial extraction and cultural projection, the works depict a landscape that has been profoundly transformed while continuing to function as a site of aesthetic and economic value production.
During Art Basel Week, the exhibition will additionally be open daily from 15–20 June 2026, 11 am – 6 pm.
Location: Artstübli – Kunst & Kultur, Steinentorberg 28, 4051 Basel
Opening hours:
Thursday/Friday: 11 am – 6 pm
Saturday: 2 pm – 6 pm
Vernissage: Thursday, June 4, 2026, 6 pm
Special event with the artist: Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 6 pm
Finissage: Saturday, June 27, 2026, 2 – 6 pm
Supported by Christoph Merian Stiftung, GGG Basel
