Art Basel - The neon artistic liberation chart
Last week you could find sygns roaming through the installations and gallery booths of the infamous art fair in Basel, searching for neon artworks and aiming to find out more about the position neon occupies in the contemporary art world today.
Kicking off with a run through the airport not to miss the awfully early 6am flight to Basel, we were thrown right into the hectic art jet-setting routine, which included sitting in the airplane next to a very grumpy man in a yellow suit holding a sign saying "Capitalism is not art", a wonderfully yummy and overpriced Swiss breakfast, and a drive through the magical old town of Basel. Then the search began.
The hunt was delightful and bountiful: neons were to be found at every corner, hidden behind iPhone-armed crowds marvelling at and instagramming them. And as the day went on the specific question to be asked about neon’s position in contemporary art became increasingly clear: has neon managed to acquire the status of art in its own right, or is it still being used as a medium to point towards a displaced source of meaning?
1. Neon artwork as a sign
|
2. A neon sign as an artworkTobias Rehberger, 自由 (english: Freedom), Galerie Urs Meile
Interestingly, the next level of the equation would be Tobias Rehberger’s 自由 (english: Freedom), where a neon advertising sign itself was turned into a work of art. The animated neon acts by opposingly lighting up the Chinese character for "Freedom" (自由) and the English "gone fishing". Fishing lovers, or anybody who knows any, will pick up on the irony of the opposition between the peaceful hobby and the less tranquil leisure activities usually indicated on neon signs, though the two are probably equally freeing. |
3. Neon beyond what it represents
|
4. Mystical neon objects
|
5. Neon as neon![]() Francois Morellet, π Weeping Neonly, A Arte Invernizzi
And finally, in a seemingly unsystematic arrangement of classic blue lines of neon, François Morellet achieved the purest degree of neon art that was to be found at Art Basel this year. Having made neon is artistic medium of choice already in the 60s, Morellet has been working on distilling neon from its cultural associations, and form from content more in general, by using abstract and geometric principles that turn his picture plane into a pre-conception and confine-free dimension. In π Weeping Neonly the neon segments, which are actually organized according to π formulas, are simply meant to refer to themselves. |