A house’s windows are its eyes.

A house’s windows are its eyes. The entrance is its mouth, the roof is the hair. The chimney can be its hair clip and the balcony—the nose. Knock, knock! Who is there?

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The exhibition Unter der Treppe im Haus: Good Morning Mattress has four pieces on the walls, two on the floor and one on the window sill.
First thing you’ll see when entering the space is the Hommage an Laura (Frank Asch)—a cluster of four wooden sculptures in book-like shapes on the floor. It seems like they were opened and then left alone. Each has a screen printed, black and white graphic on one side of the „page” and a painting on the other. Going further in, there is an installation Violett, Blau, Grün, Gelb, Orange, Rot; a circle of small, humanoid lamps wearing black suits and dolls’ shiny shoes. Everyone has a colourful t-shirt, as the title indicates. On the walls there are paintings: Transmitter, Biografiearbeit, Musikschule (Cluster), and Brainstorming; all quite different from each other. On the window sill stands the series of drawings, each done on different boarding game: Freispiel.
The show is accompanied by a text written by the artist.

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Selina Lutz told me, she writes while creating, as a way to better understand and develop her artistic practice. The text is very dense and poetic; it seems to be full of dust. The exhibition, though, is „clean” and clearly organised: the space is divided into different themes. Although the text explores (literally and figuratively) the theme of a basement, the exhibition seems more like an odd playground or an empty and eerie kindergarten. The area where domestic matters overlap the educational dimension interests me the most in this show.

Selina Lutz’s text is opened by the one-sentence paragraph: „We climb down the stairs”—a simple way to get into the mood for a procrastinated visit in the cluttered basement. The artist creates a theoretical space, where she postpones, puts away, selects and collects the physical remains of her past. The cellar is a garner of her daily life’s harvest, where she does not separate the wheat from the chaff. The text gives the time dimension to the exhibition’s space. It points the way through the show, and gives it an existential, personal and intimate layer. The latter I always appreciate a lot. To share it takes courage.

„A space beyond visibility, below function”—Lutz opens the second paragraph. I start to think about the socio-economic situation of artists in western society. I am new in Switzerland, but a lot of artists I got to know in those few months living in Basel, are working in a widely understood education field, and I do not mean the university level. What I have in mind are all the art teachers in primary and high schools, care workers assigned to kids with particular needs or disabilities, or babysitters[1]. Selina Lutz is not an exception—her experiences as a teacher were one of the sources of inspiration for the show. It can be seen in the way it is organised spatially; the reading corner, the music corner, board games etc. Although the wellbeing of the creators in the Art World seems to be fundamental for it to exist, the socio-economic situation of artists in the capitalistic system is often very bad and precarious. I can only imagine how it feels to teach the youngsters how to be creative and encourage them to explore their artistic-self, while being aware of the path which lies ahead of them: the path of the hustle.

Formally I am the most intrigued by the clash of Brainstorming and the Musikschule (Cluster) pieces. Whereas most of the artworks I categorise as belonging the drawing territory—topics handled in a sketchily way (Freispiel); graphic technics (Hommage an Laura (Frank Asch)); illustrative figures (Transmitter, Biografiearbeit)— paintings Brainstorming and Musikschule (Cluster) are clearly from the realm of painting.

My favourite piece is the Freispiel. It is really satisfying to see the boardgames covered in drawings, but maybe it is just me—I always liked the materiality of a board game. The two pieces of thick and rigid cardboard, glued together with fabric tape… It was always so stressful to play it, though. I struggle with win-or-lose situations and I try to avoid competition in my life; maybe that’s the reason why I like this piece so much. To paint on the board does not really break the rules of the game— it means to consciously give them up. And why? In order to share enigmatic scenes from everyday life. They all depict situations from non-specific domiciliary spaces. Amid book regals, furniture, boxes, trash bags, there are figures which blend into this stuffy atmosphere. The black and white board of Checkers becomes the tiles of a living room; The Mill changes into a scene with an angel-looking child, a Ludo board serves as a background for a pole dance home practice, to name a few. Always drawn in a dreamlike, messy manner. Six paintings beautifully displayed on specially prepared racks, which hold them open and slightly bent, encouraging the viewer to come closer.

When I read the title of Hommage an Laura (Frank Asch)—my first though was that Frank Asch is probably another German artist I’ve never heard before, but I should have. I was happily surprised to discover he was an american children book author. "Good morning shoes! Good morning mattress! Good morning city! Good morning boxes!”—we are welcomed in the show’s space by this enigmatic greetings—sentences written on the book-shaped sculptures. In my head these words are said sarcastically by an unkempt girl—a heroin of this piece (Laura?), who jumps, crawls, goofs around, often with a grumpy face. This character—a girl, depicted with blurred contours, in different moods, once younger once older—appears here and there in the show. In my understanding it is her „domesticity”: it is her „house” and her „basement”. Who knows, maybe this girl is now an adult. The third paragraph of the text is closed by the sentence: „Toys as assets of first attempt at governance”. I like this thought a lot, because it brings back the memories of childhood play time with barbie dolls. It concerns on the other hand, when remembering about being tamed by kindergarteners and teachers. This show is (partly) about this untamed, ungovernable girlhood, that is no stranger to sadness or darkness, delicacy, mess and fun. And I read it as an ode to it.

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Selina Lutz’s exhibition is the fourth show at this location of the Responsibility, a nonstationary art space run by Manuel Schneider in Basel[2]. In Responsibility’s history is the 9th show. Selina Lutz is a painter and sculptor based in Bern, where she is a part of the curatorial team of the off-space Milieu.

[1] Well, I am in this group. I write this text while a baby I take care of snores in the background.

[2]Responsibility is a part of InfoSpace, a venuerotationally run by Stretcher, distro, la dépendance and B-N-L, in the studio house on the Wolf hill in Basel.

Unter der Treppe im Haus: Good Morning Mattress

01.02–15.03.2025

Selina Lutz

Responsibility
Auf dem Wolf 11, CH-4052 Basel