Sabian Baumann’s work opens a passage into the unfamiliar embedded within the familiar, unfolding worlds that fork and bloom in the plural. The practice spans sculpture, film, installation, and an extensive body of drawing, along with collaborative art and activism projects. Baumann understands relationality as worlding – where the state of being is inherently entangled with others. Social and ethical concerns follow, drawing attention to vulnerable bodies and modes of existence, acknowledging more-than-human agencies, and inviting viewers into collectivity.
The drawing series nature (presque) mort – a project of mourning for what is lost, what is coming, and what has not yet been destroyed – exemplifies this approach. Its aesthetics seem to join scientific illustration, children’s books, comics and more. Symbols of transformation and hope are set against dystopian details and dark humour. Across Baumann’s work, contradiction, contingency, and complexity are held through imagination, wit, and poetic tension.
Baumann’s sculptural works are realised in unfired clay, embracing a potential return of the artwork to the earth. The series of reliefs Horizontales Paradies (2013-2014) depicts constellations of humanoid figures in intimate settings. Bodies touch, linger, make love and hold on to one another in scenes that are both gentle and demanding. While their forms are finite and temporary, the entanglements they propose endure.
—Lucie Tuma
