Collaboration with my deceased grandad Frank Basler

 

During his lifetime, my grandad Frank Basler was an avid crystal collector. But his interest went beyond mere collecting, he was intrigued by the inner life of crystal, trying to find an access to their world beyond their surface. Over the course of the last 30 years of his life, the time in which I was born, he not only collected but photographed his extensive collection of crystals. My memory of my grandad is one of sitting next to him listening to him recounting stories of crystals, of their emergence and their strucutre while gently warming up cold stones in my hands. Upon his death in August 2023, he didn’t only leave behind his collection but photographs of his crystals and extensive notes written in minuscule pencil writing.

 

Over the course of a residency at Forum Schlossplatz I collaborated with my granddad beyond his death to created three rooms, with three degrees of crystal abstraction. Starting with my grandad’s crystals in their original boxes, a room with three-dimensional wooden structures reminiscent of my granddad’s boxes with oversized, soft fabric-crystals followed. The final room showed projections of immaterial kaleidoscopic re-iminaginations of my grandad’s crystals.

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2024

dimension variable

wood, slides, video, fabric, silver tape, crystals, audio

 

Supported by:

Aargauer Kuratorium

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Exhibition:
Residenz Residenz, Forum Schlossplatz, Aarau, Switzerland, 2024

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photo: Leonie Brandner and Peter Koehl