Emanuel Rossetti

We are pleased to present the photographic work “Walks” (2020) which consists of 20 photographs by Emanuel Rossetti (born 1987, Basel, Switzerland). All images are arranged as a single grid, bringing together a selection of places and motifs that the artist took at the borders of Switzerland, France and Germany. The installation visualizes the geographical proximity of all locations whilst highlighting the isolated utilization of these places.

Deriving from his first photographs in which Rossetti captured hallways through a fish eye lens in Parisian residential houses (2018), in “Walks” he moves this technique to outdoor motif. Similar to his interest in semi-private spaces, such as the hallways which are considered private spaces but ones that still fulfil the conventions of public space, Rossetti’s pictures continue to refer to door’s eye holes and a perspective where one can furtively observe outside events.

The eye hole creates an alienated environment by technically centralizing an entire space and making the maximum visible through a tiny space. Away from domestic borders, in Spring and throughout Summer 2020, Rossetti explores his neighbourhood in Basel, a border region, disclosing the contrasts inside of this dense area by tracing human remains and discovering new ways of isolation.

Behind the messy and wildly grown hill shown in “Track” reside the customs where thousands of trucks pass through every day. As the customs close in the evening, trucks arriving too late are forced to spend the night at the borders until those re-open in the morning. While the truckers are waiting, making time and spending the night, the borders themselves and the areas surrounding them become a sort of zone of their own, a heterotopia.

Just opposite this, across the street, the work “Magnolias” brings to light suburban dreams consisting of ideal houses, beautiful gardens decorated with exotic, colourful flowers. This particular work links to a photographic series from the 1990’s by Fischli & Weiss which showed perfectly designed modern residential houses and gardens in Zurich, while at the borders of Basel, the same houses and gardens are embedded in a more heterogenous environment.

Motifs such as “Alley” or “Passage” show the current emptiness of city streets, shops or restaurants and symbolize the decrease of time spent in public. Emptiness was already a theme in Rossetti’s earliest (2009–2010) virtually rendered 3D-Donut works, a shape which is recognized by its hole in the center. In his engagement with spatial contingencies, he continues to delineate both lived-in and imagined spaces to further meditate on the symbolic value of spatialized objects and structures.

Emanuel Rossetti (b. 1987 in Basel, CH), lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. Selected solo shows: Pina, Vienna (2019); Jan Kaps, México City (2018); Jan Kaps, Cologne (2017); Istituto Svizzero, Milano (2017); Kunsthalle Bern (2014); The Power Station, Dallas (2013); Selected group shows: Hauser & Wirth, London (2018); Tinos Quarry Platform, Greece (2018); Swiss Institute, New York (2018); Tbilisi16 (by Kunsthalle Zurich), Shindisi, Tbilisi (2016); Kunsthalle Wien (2016); Fri Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg (2015); Kunsthalle Basel (2014); Kunsthalle Bern (2012).