Christian Kathriner & Jolanthe Kugler

The New Orchestra Basel has dedicated its concerts this season to the theme of "boundless" and is now approaching these questions once again from a new angle.

Swiss artist Christian Kathriner is installing a temporary, rudimentary laboratory at the Kulturreverenz in Basel: an artistic testing ground for exploring the theme of "boundlessness." Jolanthe Kugler, curator at the Vitra Design Museum, draws connections between Kathriner's laboratory and influential places and paintings in art and cultural history.

Stains are created in the laboratory, a stain culture. The covered floor of the room has become a tub. Canvases are stacked on simple table frames, with paint dripping incessantly onto them. The whole thing exudes the poetry of a burst pipe.

Stains are transgressions; they appear unexpectedly and cannot be defined in terms of form or content. They are infinitely ambiguous, and their inherent hermeneutics soon give way to a sense of unease. For stains are marks that label, sometimes stigmatize. They are derailment, dirt, mishap, contamination. Stains are traces of an action and memories of it. They tell of the flow of ink, of the flow of things...