Guardians (sirena alpina)

Material

Marmot fur, metal, radar sensors, loudspeaker, audiofile; 44.00 cm

Dating

2009

About the artwork

Guardians (sirena alpina) – his marmots, standing as if monuments to a thoughtful approach to nature.

About the artist

Mirko Baselgia (1982) grew up in Lantsch/Lenz (GR). After training as a structural draughtsman, he studied at the Zurich University of the Arts from 2005-2010. Since 2003 regular exhibition participations; solo exhibitions: Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur (2013), Kunstmuseum Olten (2014), Schönthal Monastery, Langenbruck (2014), Kunst in der Krypta, Grossmünster Zurich (2017), Abbatiale de Bellelay (2018). Various awards and prizes, such as Kiefer-Hablitzel-Stipendium (2012) and Manor-Kunstpreis Chur (2013). After a longer stay in Zurich and various studio scholarships, he returned to his home in Graubünden in 2018.

Mirko Baselgia prefers to work in and from the context in which he lives and with the production conditions that are available to him. Although his working method has changed several times in recent years, the rural-alpine environment and nature, the habitat of humans and animals, always play a supporting role in his work. He does not commit himself to any medium, formal language or particular material, but develops each work from scratch.

The seemingly disparate appearance of the works is due to the fact that the respective form is created depending on various factors and the artist involves other professionals as well as animals or natural processes in the design of his works. Art and nature, man and animal – all are equally protagonists and shape Baselgia’s works. The artist demonstrates that the actions of each individual or a community form space and can be perceived as a plastic process.

Mirko Baselgia addresses space neither as an abstract quantity nor as a fixed given, but as the result of the action and interaction of individuals in a certain structure. Each of his works ultimately revolves around the question of the determinations of space and thus expands the traditional concept of sculpture. Unlike the social sculpture of Josef Beuys, Mirko Baselgia’s sculptural ideas do not manifest themselves in theoretical discourses, but in works that can be experienced by the senses, which make space experienceable again and again: His Guardians (2013), for example, emit warning signals of marmots and thus define space as territory; he places his shepherd’s crooks with the insignia of the alphabet as metaphors at the beginning of the cultivation of the earth (Bastung digl Paster – Aleph/Beth, 2013); in his city plans, the structures of the street grid can be read as an expression of civilising developments (Democratic Grid – Athens, 2011; Industrial Imprisonment – London, 2011), just as the expansive model of the railway network from the USA testifies to the opening up of the country and a new shaping of the landscape by transport routes (American Railroads, 2018). Mirko Baselgia examines the habitats that animals create under different conditions in order to make visible the existential significance of space as a plastic form (Lupus, 2011; Endoderm, 2012-2013; Midada da structura, 2012). He goes on to show that the order of space can always change and does not follow any overriding laws (Restructuraziun, 2014). The sensual and mental processes lead Mirko Baselgia to a constantly new perception of the relationship of living beings to each other and to their environment. In his emblematic works, he makes it clear that his artistic interest goes beyond an expanded definition of space and is essentially determined by a sharpened self-perception and questions about the subject who lives and acts in political, economic and ecological contexts. For Mirko Baselgia, space always has social dimensions.