Timothée Calame: Curriculum

Swiss Institute is delighted to present Curriculum, the first institutional exhibition of Swiss artist Timothée Calame. Calame’s recent work concentrates on how space is designed and partitioned, using sculptural curtains, platforms, barriers and screens, which are often placed in dialogue with spectral paintings and small sculptures. At Swiss Institute, a newly commissioned body of work explores the effects of failed real estate speculation on public space.

The main element of Curriculum is a labyrinthine architecture constructed inside 102 Franklin Street that occupies and divides the gallery. The walls of the structure are formed using large sheets of printed tarpaulin. Once used to conceal a number of vacant commercial properties, these panels were used to mask the casualties of a failed investment made before the financial crisis of 2008. The interior is printed with artistic impressions of the near and far future – a vision that manages to includes alien spacecraft and cupcakes.

Populating the gallery, there are also a number of masklike watercolor paintings of real and imagined faces by Calame, which are paired with contributions by artists Hugo Baud and Alan Schmalz. These are accompanied by the latest of Calame’s motorized sculptures, an authoritative figure who surveys the space, wildly jerking its head – conveying a looming sense of political horror.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.