Launched in 2000, Art Unlimited is Art Basel's pioneering exhibition platform for projects that transcend the classical art-show stand - including video projections, large-scale installations, massive sculptures and live performances. Selected by the Art Basel Committee, it has been curated since its inception by Geneva curator Simon Lamunière. (Hall 1)
This year, Galerie Chantal Crousel will present the work of Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Scale of Justice Carried by Shore Foam, 2010.
A readymade scale of justice teeters precariously out of balance atop the turbulent crest of a handcrafted sculpture of foam. This mass of bubbles of gas and air is given solid form through the use of synthetic polymer foam, a chemical substrate found in ever ything from household, sport, and leisure products to transportation, industrial, and military applications. The image of foam by the seashore has come to occupy the public imaginary more prominently in recent years as a result of countless media depictions of man-made catastrophes – from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the now annual flooding worldwide caused by global warming. With these ecological events cutting across national and territorial borders, the scale of justice has become an object of explicit struggle. Presented here in sculptural form, this ephemeral froth stands as the remains of something that has come to pass, frozen in time,with the final balance of the scale left undetermined.
