Comfort #8

September 10, 2010

Opening: 10.09.2010, 6.00 pm
13.09.2010 – 23.10.2010
Curated by Katarzyna Krysiak, Sarmen Beglarian
Cooperation: Hostel Helvetia, Biuro Wystaw

Galeria Foksal proudly presents Comfort #8 , a new project from Swiss art duo L/B.
Sabina Lang (b. 1972 in Bern) and Daniel Baumann (b. 1967 in San Francisco), who both live and work in Burgdorf, Switzerland, have engaged in a wide-ranging artistic practice since 1990. While their creative output straddles the boundary between contemporary art and design and often veers towards the absurd, it also seems to reify childhood dreams and reveries. Via playful sculptural installations, they manipulate the commonplace to reveal a sense of ambivalence latent in everyday situations. Hotel Everland, a remarkable project from 2007, actualizes their idea of a perfect lodging. The ultra-comfortable mobile "one-room hotel" was installed at the rooftop of Palais de Tokyo in Paris and offered stunning views of the Eiffel Tower. L/B have staged their interventions in galleries, museums and public spaces in a number of cities: from Asia (Beijing, Tokyo) through Europe (Berlin, Budapest or Kiev), Africa (Cape Town) and North America (New York, Los Angeles).They participated in three group exhibitions in Poland, including Wola Art 2009, for which they produced Spielfield #5, a soccer field in the middle of the Moczydlo Lake in Warsaw.

Since 1997 they have worked on a series titled Comfort, which began with letters constructed from inflated polyester-foil tubes – their signature mode of expression— to form words such as "sport" or "undo." The focus then shifted onto the architectural aspect of their installations, which evolved into large-scale projects utilizing inflated tubes placed outside (Comfort #6) and inside buildings (Comfort #5).

This latest site-specific project, circumscribed by the architecture and tradition of Galeria Foksal, continues the Comfort series. Made of dozens of gold-coated inflated tubes affixed to the gallery walls, Comfort #8 visually recomposes the space into a unique whole. With reference to the notions of scale and proportion, it invites visitors to reimagine the familiar interiors. The intervention alters not only the dimensions and textures, but also the acoustic properties of the space it enwraps. The "surface" rendered is both fragile (soft) and solid (hard), thereby creating an atmosphere of comfort and coziness juxtaposed with the shrinking and compressing of space.

This project is co-financed by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.