West, London
Ivana Bašić
Temptation of Being
Albion JeuneAlbion Jeune is pleased to present Temptation of Being, New York-based artist Ivana Bašić's first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition comprises a series of drawings and intimate, sculptural works that test the bounds of human materiality. Sculptures in wax, white bronze, blown glass, copper and stainless steel reveal biomechanical curves and alabaster cores resembling abstract and abject reductions of the body. Shaped by the artist's early experiences of violence and brutality during the collapse of her native Yugoslavia, Bašić's hybrid bodies contemplate metamorphosis as a substitute for physical flight when there is nowhere left to retreat or hide. The artist references Catherine Malabou's "Ontology of the Accident", which posits the transformation into Otherness as the only choice available when physical flight has become impossible. Probing the limitations of organic plasticity, the abstracted bodily forms are imbued with potential, evoking gestures of opening up and blossoming, while the reality of what they are fleeing – war, technological advances, political instability – lingers darkly in the background. At the heart of the exhibition lies the Ungrounding series, a collection of watercolour drawings on paper that serve as the conceptual and visual focal point. The elliptical forms, dissolved pigments, and warping of paper, invoke , womb like environment, cyclical images of nebulae, cellular life, becoming and unbecoming "dust to dust." For Bašić, this sort of quantum return is an optimistic, generative space—a reacquaintance with the most basal and indivisible ingredients of existence. The Ungrounding series acts as a blueprint for the formation of the body and the being and its ethereal origins, explored through the sculptural works in the show. Bašić's practice employs a visual language in which each material symbolically links to a conceptual counterpart. This codex is consistent across the artist's practice, allowing the viewer to understand each artwork in the context of Bašić's greater theoretical cosmology. Wax represents temporal elements such as flesh and organic tissue; its origins in petroleum gesture toward the cyclicality of life and decay. Glass, meanwhile, represents the breath that formed it, and stainless steel the forces of life and death that act on the body. Stone is the consolidation of organic life and matter that, under pressure, is further atomized into dust. In her consideration of dust Bašić references philosopher Reza Negarestani: "Dust is irreducible. The elemental object of creation—a formula for life without life itself." These materials, along with intangible forces like pressure, breath, weight, and torque, combine to create a body of work that investigates our most pressing ontological fixations: the fragility of the human condition; the breakdown of self and the Other; the reimagination of life and death; and the quest for immortality. Ivana Bašić (b. 1986, Belgrade)is a contemporary artist born and raised in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Since 2010, she has lived and worked in New York City. Since arriving in the United States, Bašić has received significant critical and institutional support internationally, having presented work at institutional venues including Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2024, 2023); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2023); National Gallery, Prague (2021); Museum of Art+Design, Miami (2020); Het HEM, Amsterdam (2020); Contemporary Art Museum Estonia, Talinn (2019); Kumu Art Museum, Talinn (2019); NRW Forum, Düsseldorf (2019); Athens Biennial (2018); Belgrade Biennial (2018); Künstlerhaus Graz (2018); MO.CO La Panacée, Montpellier (2018); Hessel Museum of Art, New York (2017); Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg (2017); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016), and many others. Upcoming institutional exhibitions include MO.CO La Panacée (2025), and Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade (2025). Bašić is a recipient of the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship for Sculpture (2024), a two-time recipient of the Two Trees Cultural Subsidy Program (2020, 2023), and a two-time recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant Program (2024, 2016). Her work is included in the collection of the Whitney Museum, the Zabludowicz Collection, and many other private collections.