Selina Baumann’s preferred subject is the classical sculpture with pedestal. Her objects made of fired clay situate themselves at the point of intersection between abstraction and figuration. Sticking to this point of departure and her preoccupation with corporality, the artist seeks new forms of expression in the works created especially for the Aargauer Kunsthaus.”,”<div>Ever since she received her M.A. in sculpture in 2014, Selina Baumann has been attracting attention with her biomorphic ceramic sculptures. With great precision and in multiple work steps she creates elaborate objects of variously coloured clay, such as the multi-part work Nora, Pirmin, Cyrill, Agens & Salome, Valentina, Andrea und Marianne (2014). The delicate, elemental figures are neither human nor animal nor plant, and yet they combine rudiments of all.

In the new ceramic work Skulptur 1-20 (2015 – 2016) for her CARAVAN exhibition Selina Baumann pursues a new conceptual approach: no longer primarily interested in the meticulously detailed figure, she instead looks for a spontaneous form that is created within a short time. She avails herself of a loosely borrowed vocabulary of forms that is embedded in our collective memory. The spirals, plant-like shapes, molecular structures or serpentine shapes have a model-like quality. As basic material she uses versatile red clay, which she forms into sausage shapes. These she uses in a quick work process to model objects which, transformed by the process of firing, become solid and fragile. As a result, the artist’s modelling hand remains visible in the rough, unglazed surface of the ceramics as marks of the work process.

The focus of Selina Baumann’s current work is not the uniqueness of the individual work; instead, as a result of the serial arrangement und the strikingly close placement in the exhibition space, the roughly 20 sculptures combine to form an installation. By presenting these identical pedestals in the display of works from the collection of the Aargauer Kunsthaus, the artist seeks, not just in terms of location but thematically as well, the confrontation with classical sculpture. In the sky-lit gallery, surrounded by key works of Swiss art from several centuries, the simple play with forms and the downright lowbrow appearance of the sculptures of Selina Baumann undergo a deliberate refraction informed by subtle wit.Selina Baumann (b. 1988) opens the 2017 CARAVAN series of young art and surprises with new ceramic works conceived specially for the Aargauer Kunsthaus.