Kunsthaus Baselland St. Jakob-Strasse 170 CH-4132 Muttenz/Basel Suisse
The first institutional solo exhibition of Lorna Macintyre (born 1977 in Glasgow) in Switzerland bears the title Form and Freedom, a wording which is taken from the book I Wanted To Write A Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet by the American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963). In 2007, the artist completed the MFA at Glasgow School of Art during which she spent a semester at Hunter College in New York. With solo exhibitions at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, at the ICA in London, with periodic representations in the galleries Kamm, Berlin and Mary Mary, Glasgow and her participation in many international group exhibitions, Macintyre has been the subject of much recent attention.
In the work of Macintyre, there is the interplay of sculptures, installations, found objects from nature, simple everyday objects, collages, prints and photographs. She works specifically with the respective exhibition spaces and correlates the works conceptually and scenically. Her choice of materials and vocabulary of shapes are decisively influenced by analogies between the man-made and the natural, between nature and culture and other nuances of these oppositions. Inspired by selected works of literature, the artist constantly creates a poetic course in which the signs and symbols existing in the works entangle the viewer in a network of relationships, and, at the same time, showing him alleged possibilities.
For the exhibition at the Kunsthaus Baselland, the artist shows a series of new works that engage the poem Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. Macintyre combines each of the four chapters of the poem with one of the four elements of earth, water, fire and air. In this way, the piece The Past Has Another Pattern, resulted from solarization, is linked to the element of water, with downward triangle shapes representing the alchemical symbol for water. Words Move, Music Moves is the title of a work hanging from the ceiling and composed of one aluminium and one steel cable that show quite subtle moves depending on the airflow in the room. Every Phrase and Every Sentence is an End and a Beginning is a sculpture of chained triangles of welded copper mounted on the wall that represents, since the tip of the triangle is facing upwards, the alchemical symbol for fire. Love is Most Nearly Itself When the Here and Now Cease to Matter is the title of a work that relates to the element of earth. This installation, consisting of a mirror and a stone-circle on top of it, is a reminiscent of the cultic, the archaic and the historic; the mirror throws the mirror image back, as a gesture of love.