Ultra Brag, Südquaistrasse
Basel, Switzerland
2 -7 June 2008
VOLTA4—opening on June 2nd—announces auxiliary projects and events, including a return of last year’s Outdoor | Sculpture Projects, introducing a works on paper section as well as supplementary artists’ projects that include the Waterside Pavilion, designed by German artist team Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hoerbelt and the fair’s main entrance, The Gate of Woodoo, designed by Basel based artistic duo, yummy industries. Also two special editions by this year’s Whitney Biennial participants, Melanie Schiff and Eduardo Sarabia.
The VOLTA4 Outdoor Sculpture Project section will once again enliven the Ultra Brag area, with large-scale works and performances, too difficult to show in a standard booth presentation. The projects this year either address the location itself (using the water, the bridge, the grass hillside) or emit light, so that in the evening the illumination changes the abandoned aspect of the harbour area and lights up the pavilion where performances and collector dinners are to be staged. The Pavilion itself—designed and constructed by Frankfurt-based artists Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hoerbelt with support by Nüssli, the company responsible for building the VOLTA fair—acts as an architectural counterweight to the main hall, taking advantage of Ultra Brag’s area situation next to the Rhine.
Featured inside the Pavilion is the large-scale Winter/Hoerbelt work Mensa, a long steel table, out of which the silhouette of 120 place settings have been cut. All the “unnecessary” parts of the table have been sliced away leaving only the geometric shapes of the dinner service. Corresponding to a difficult time in some countries in our planet, 20% of the sale of any of the smaller 6-seater dinner tables by Winter+Hoerbelt will go directly to the international relieforganization People in Need (PIN). Working directly with local churches, religious communities and NGO's, PINs members travel directly to disaster areas cash-in-hand to distribute funds directly to the organizations and victims in need.
The Waterside Pavilion will host also performances by Chicago-based art duo Miller & Shellabarger and other events; during the Press & Professional Preview curator Paco Barragán`s new book, The Art Fair Age, published by CHARTA Books will be presented. The Art Fair Age examines in an analytical, well-documented and irreverent manner the ongoing evolution of the art fair phenomenon. The VOLTA4 Outdoor Sculpture Projects also include work by:
Connecting the sculpture park to the main hall will be a major intervention by Basel-based duo yummy industries, a vast gateway constructed from salvaged wood where visitors can pin their dreams and spells. The structure will lead visitors into the Annex—an architectural addition used in the first VOLTA fair and designed by Berlin architectural team Florence Girod and Philip Engelbrecht—extending the hall to include seven new booths.
Inside the hall, the Curatorial Board chose this year to dedicate the project section of the fair to works on paper. Extending the architectural concept of the VOLTA floor plan—where the gallery level and its attendant well provide a literal breathing space by opening up the visual horizon—the feeling was that paper works might augment the sense of quietude and pause created in this focal point of the fair. In this section, the visitor will find not just drawings, but also paper used in a variety of ways as a support, medium and sculptural material. Artists and galleries participating in the Paper
Projects Section are:
Finally, VOLTA4 is proud to announce a collaboration with two Whitney Biennial artists for their 2008 editions: Chicago-based photographer Melanie Schiff's Self-Portrait after John's, in an edition of 30, which shows the artist as vulnerable and childlike yet with a strong sexual undertow, and Guadalajara-based artist Eduardo Sarabia's edition of 30 unique ceramic plates, which continue his exploration of traditional Mexican craft techniques with modern themes. VOLTA would like to thank Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, and I-20 Gallery, New York for their respective support in the production of the editions.
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