How do spaces preserve time? What do materials collect and store? Marie Matusz (b. 1994) explores these questions in her largest institutional solo exhibition to date at Kunsthalle Basel. The Basel-based artist has created an installation for the historical spaces that functions like a Reservoir—it absorbs, stores, and simultaneously transforms.
Using industrial materials such as steel, zinc, and acrylic, Matusz transforms the exhibition space into a site of resonance. The installation is consistently rendered in dark tones reminiscent of soil or oil. On the surfaces across the sculptures and wall works, where natural materials meet artificial ones, a subtle interplay of reflections emerges: Mirrored surfaces capture fragments of the space, making visible what is present and what remains putatively unseen.
A site-specific sound installation amplifies this sense of collecting and releasing. Deep bass sounds per- meate the rooms, making the architecture resonate. The walls absorb these vibrations and release them again, while the metallic floor preserves the traces of visitors’ movements. Between new and reworked pieces, Matusz places historical works from the Basel Kunstverein’s collection, situating her investigation within the institution’s past and inviting the viewer to consider time not as a linear stream but as a cyclical reservoir—where past and future fold into the present moment.
Marie Matusz: Reservoir
A reservoir is a place of containment, accumulation, and transformation. It absorbs what flows into it, reshapes it, and releases it again in an altered form. This duality of preservation and change is central to Marie Matusz’s installation. Here, Reservoir is not merely a physical environment but a metaphorical vessel where history, memory, and meaning converge. Shaped by its surroundings, Matusz’s work absorbs the textures, echoes, and stories of the architecture and transforms them into something entirely new. This exhibition also marks a transitional moment linking Matusz’s commission, Canons and Continents, a series of thirty sculptures installed on the back wall of Kunsthalle Basel last fall and on view until August.
A Space Between Time
Upon entering the exhibition, time seems to stand still. Diffused light bathes the space, creating a timeless glow that obscures any sense of the hour. Gray zinc flooring absorbs the incoming light and reflects the tinted ceiling above, evoking the sense of being contained within a box.
Three large wooden frameworks dominate the space, each storing two paintings within dark enclosures. These structures continue Matusz’s long-standing engagement with vitrines, but here they go beyond the conventional museum display case. Their design blends storage and presentation, creating structures that simultaneously protect, frame, and contain. Concomitantly, they evoke library shelves, closets, or bay windows. The series Towards Vanishing (2025) is partially covered by layered materials such as glass-like acrylic panels and mirrors, whose reflective surfaces throw back fragmented images of the surroundings. Their enclosures function as actual picture frames and transform into mental production spaces.
The exhibition takes shape through corridor-like arrangements that create an interplay between intimate and public spaces: sheltered areas emerge in cabinet-like spaces, while open zones invite encounters. These seamless transitions resist clear categorization—like a parloir poised between private and public spheres. This spatial choreography prompts visitors to engage with their surroundings and reflect on
the fragile nature of their own presence in space. By incorporating works from the Basel Kunstverein’s collection, Matusz bridges institutional heritage and contemporary practice. Her curatorial choices high- light how art associations serve as catalysts for intercultural dialogue, where inherited memories and current discourse intersect and evolve.
Revealing History’s Layers
In the second exhibition space, the work Still-Life, Still (2023) displays three segments of cast iron pipes, evoking archaeological artifacts or skeletal remains. Matusz’s engagement with industrial relics continues in the wall piece Nature Builds No Machine (Fragment Series) (2025), where she creates a new work froman existing one. Both works echo her installation on the institution’s back wall, where iron tubes are integrated into vitrine-like structures. The oversized artwork serves as a photographic negative of the back wall presentation, thereby revealing the permeability between institutional interior and exterior space.
The final room acts as an architectural membrane.The palimpsestic photographic work Fellow Prisoners (2025) depicts a statue of a figure reading that merges with the urban daily life visible behind it. Through its layers, it offers multiple interpretations: a reconsideration of established histories, a testament to historical rewriting, or an acknowledgment of temporal coexistence.
Sound as Memory
Distributed across the rooms in various units, the sound piece Reservoir (2025) evolves into a bodily experience, never fully contained in one place. Like a sonic reservoir, it gathers and transforms layers of time through an assemblage of existing sounds—mechanical noises, reversed conversations, and older recordings from the artist’s previous installations. These elements gradually fade into one another, creating fluid transitions. Deep frequencies resonate the metal flooring, capturing visitors’ movements and translating them into visible traces. In this way, the floor becomes a living register, continuously transforming the space. Through sound, materials, and motion, Marie Matusz constructs an environment that understands history not as linear, but as an accumulation of multilayered experiences and meanings.
at Kunsthalle Basel
until April 24, 2025