Chloé Delarue presents new works at the Pax Art Awards exhibition
As one of the recipients of this year’s Pax Art Awards for emerging artists, Chloé Delarue presents new works in the exhibition Swiss Media Art: Marc Lee, Chloé Delarue, Laurent Güdel at HeK Basel
Questions of technological progress, and on how the automation of labour, cloning or artificial intelligence affect biological life, are central to Chloé Delarue’s artistic practice. Last year, the Geneva-based artist was an artist in residence at CERN with Patricia Domínguez as the winners of the Simetría Award 2020, researching new expressions in their practices in connection with fundamental science.
For the exhibition at HEK Basel, Delarue stages new installations from her ongoing cycle of works TAFAA – Toward a Fully Automated Appearance. Its title is inspired by an article published around 1971 by economist Fischer Black on the automation of the stock market. Her heterogeneous assemblages of elements, ranging from recycled industrial materials, videos, neon tubes to latex prints, resemble dystopian environments familiar from science fiction films. Inquiry into the idea of a virtual simulacrum, self-expression and the fragmentation of how we perceive reality through digital technologies are themes running through this new series of works.
This year, subject to travel restrictions, Delarue and Domínguez will complete their Simetría residency travelling to the European Southern Observatory’s facilities in the Chilean Atacama desert to continue expanding their artistic practices in its world-class observing facilities for astronomy: La Silla, Paranal, and the ALMA Observatory.
Groundbreaking in the field of digital art, the Pax Art Awards honour Swiss media artists who employ media technologies or reflect on their effects. They were brought to life in 2018 by the Art Foundation Pax in collaboration with HeK. The prize money granted by the Awards enables artists to develop new works, which are presented in a joint exhibition in the following year. Zurich-based artist Marc Lee received the main Pax Art Awards 2021 prize. Together with Chloé Delarue, Biel-based artist Laurent Güdel was the recipient of a Pax Art Awards 2021 prize for emerging artists. The jury members of the Pax Art Awards 2021 were Mónica Bello, Head of Arts at CERN; Carmen Weisskopf, artist; Luc Meier, Director of La Becque Résidence d’artistes, and Sabine Himmelsbach, Head of HeK, Basel.
The exhibition Swiss Media Art: Marc Lee, Chloé Delarue, Laurent Güdel – Pax Art Awards 2021 runs through 24 April 2022 at HeK Basel.
Main image: Exhibition view of Future Love. Desire and Kinship in Hypernature, HEK, Basel, Photo: Florimond Dupont, Courtesy the artist and HEK.