Art Taaalkssss: Samuel Leuenberger, Augustas Serapinas

Installation view Augustas Serapinas: Phillip, Lukas & Isidora, curated by Emalin, 2015, SALTS, Birsfelden, photo: Stefan Jaeggi Photographer

For the last Art Taaalkssss conversation before the summer break, curator Samuel Leuenberger and artist Augustas Serapinas will discuss past and future collaborations. In 2015, they worked together during Serapinas’ solo exhibition Phillip, Lukas & Isidora at SALTS in Birsfelden. Since 2016, Samuel Leuenberger is the lead curator of Art Basel’s Parcours sector, a large inner city sculpture and performance project, for which Augustas Serapinas is invited to produce a new installation.

Creating secret and in-between spaces is a recurring topic for Augustas Serapinas, who likes to use spaces that are right next to us but we don’t think about. Considering each exhibition as an opportunity to solve a problem, Serapinas often begins a project by talking to the people who live next door to the specific site. These encounters often enrich his projects and provide the conceptual genesis of his work.

Augustas Serapinas (born in Vilnius, Lithuania) lives and works in Vilnius. He completed his BFA at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. A selection of recent and forthcoming exhibitions include: The Dreamers, 58th October Salon, Belgrade Biennial, Belrade, 2020; RIBOCA2, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Riga, 2020; May You Live in Interesting Times, 58th Venice Biennale of Art, 2019; Where is Luna?, CURA Basement, Roma, 2018; Give Up the Ghost, Baltic triennial 13, Vilnius, 2018; How to Live Together, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2017.

Independent curator Samuel Leuenberger has been running the not-for-profit exhibition space SALTS in Birsfelden, near Basel, since 2009, presenting young Swiss and international artists. Since 2012, Leuenberger has worked with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia on several occasions, including a presentation of the Cahiers D’Artistes (artists’ books) in 2013. More recently, he was an associate curator of Salon Suisse 2017, the collateral public program of the Swiss Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. Alongside the work at SALTS and Art Basel Parcours, he has been appointed as new Mediator for the New Patrons (Les Nouveaux Commanditaires) in Switzerland. He is a committee member of Basel’s cultural department, Kunstkredit Basel and regularly teaches at art schools, currently at the Masters Department at the ZHDK in Zurich.