Invited to stage an exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, artist Nick Mauss has conceived Bizarre Silks, Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts, etc. in which scenographic, conceptual, and curatorial concerns coincide. The act is in keeping with Mauss’s longstanding interest in the form of the exhibition as an artistic medium in its own right. Bizarre Silks, Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts, etc. unfolds as a series of unexpected encounters in which the artist draws out each artwork’s distinct presence while heightening the relationships between them. Here, as in so many of his exhibitions, Mauss deliberately reacts to the conditions of a given space, paying attention to pacing and architecture, as well as creating devices for display, framing, and visual obstruction, which include a folding screen and a series of painted thresholds that reorient the viewer’s approach to what, and how, they are seeing.

With Anonymous, Gretchen Bender, Felix Bernstein / Gabe Rubin, William S. Burroughs / Brion Gysin, James Ensor, Hannah Höch, Ray Johnson, Konrad Klapheck, Ketty La Rocca, Nick Mauss, Rosemary Mayer, Robert Morris, Ken Okiishi, Edward Owens, Anton Perich, Georgia Sagri, Bea Schlingelhoff, and Megan Francis Sullivan.