special exhibition:
Sou Vai Keng + Martin Zeller

Vernissage: Friday, June 13, 7 pm


Opening hours:
Monday to Sunday, 2 pm - 10 pm


Artist talk:
Thursday, June 19, 2025, 7 pm

Finissage: Friday, June 27, 7 pm



Address:
Franck Areal, Horburgstrasse 105, 4057 Basel
Eingang via Mauerstrasse 90

In his latest body of work, Basel-based artist Martin Zeller turns his lens toward spaces where time appears to have paused—abandoned industrial halls, vacant office buildings, and places once shaped by human labor. Together with writer and artist Sou Vai Keng, Zeller forms the creative duo behind Werke und Spiele ("Works and Games"), a project that reflects on urban transformation through large-scale photography and poetic text. The starting point of their exploration is a series of adaptive reuse projects by In Situ, an architecture office led by Barbara Buser, based in Basel, known for its pioneering work in repurposing disused industrial sites such as the Gundeldinger Feld in Basel, the Ziegelhof in Liestal, and the Lagerplatz in Winterthur.

Zeller approaches these spaces using a high-resolution photographic technique that captures even the smallest of details: the rust on a steel beam, peeling paint, worn flooring. The resulting images are not traditional architectural photographs but rather abstract, tactile visual compositions. Some stretch up to 320 centimeters wide and read like textured landscapes of memory—fragments of a collective past rooted in labor, production, and decay.

This sense of time passing—what the artists describe as “the oxidation of time”—is not only visible in the subject matter but also embedded in the presentation of the work. Into these visual memory spaces, Sou Vai Keng weaves short literary texts—written with archival-quality pens and inks directly onto the photographs. Her poetic and often surreal fragments reflect on the ethics and evolution of labor, drawing on sources as varied as the ancient Greek poet Hesiod and the highly organized societies of ants. Her writing broadens the theme of work beyond industrial history, placing it within the larger cultural and philosophical fabric of human experience.

Zeller and Sou have been collaborating since 2010. Their earlier projects have taken them to Berlin, Munich, Hong Kong, and Lisbon. What unites their work is a shared sensitivity to atmosphere and narrative—the intangible layers that hover within urban space. In New Gardens, for example, they explored poetic interventions in the urban environment, while LX Under Construction, their long-term study of gentrification in Lisbon, examined the cultural and social consequences of rapid urban change.

Werke und Spiele, realized in 2024 with the support of Baubüro In Situ, Denkstatt sàrl, unterdessen, and Zirkular, continues this trajectory. The title references Friedrich Schiller’s essay On the Aesthetic Education of Man, in which play is described as the highest expression of human freedom. In this sense, there is a kind of aesthetic playfulness at work in Zeller’s photographs—a sensitivity that invites viewers to look again at what might otherwise be dismissed as derelict or obsolete.

In a time when cities often favor demolition over preservation, Zeller’s images suggest another way forward: one that values the existing, the layered, the imperfect. His work does not aim to monumentalize the past, but rather to create open spaces for reflection—visual thinking spaces where memory and material intersect.

In cooperation with baubüro in situ ag, Denkstatt sàrl, unterdessen, Zirkular GmbH