BIRSFELDEN.- Lena Henke (born 1982 in Warburg (GER), lives and works in New York City and Frankfurt am Main) has developed a diverse body of sculptural works, often arranged in comprehensive spatial installations. Henke’s work references urban planning, Land Art, human relationships, sexuality and Fetishism, consistently infiltrating the patriarchal structure of art history with a very smart and humorous tone. Her formal language and use of materials often alludes to Minimal combined vividly with Surrealist imagery.

For her first solo-show in Switzerland the artist has created a completely new body of work inspired by research into two separate systems of architecture and utility. The first, a catalog of utopic outdoor sites since the 16th century–some of which still exist, others forgotten or never realized. The second, an extensive look into New York’s water shed system and the flow of water from the Catskills to the five boroughs. Henke has crafted her vision of their combination and reproduced New York’s famous skyline symbol, the water tank as well as various smaller ceramic sculptures.

The research into these systems was conducted during vast field trips across Europe and the US. Henke and curator Anna Goetz followed the tracks of artists pursuing radical approaches to garden and landscape planning far off from urban structures and human scale as reference.

A real size wooden water tank sits on top of a massive plinth-like cube between urban courtyard and wild garden. Water is the central element here, changing the interior and exterior architecture of SALTS’ exhibition space and transforms it into a comprehensive immersive sculpture. The aesthetic of the inside space is extremely artificial in contrast to the outside area. Everything white in white–ceiling, walls and floor seemingly merging into an (misty or ranchy, dreamy, distopian,dirty… atmosphere. The floor is sloping, the back wall is slightly tilted and water is running down the wall, puddles and flows over the threshold to the outside.

In reference to the drinking water supply system of the iconic fountains of Basel Henke connected the water tank to the nearby river Birs. The water is lead from the river up through the garden, into the water tank and from there downwards into the exhibition space. Colourful ceramic lily pads loosely arranged on the wet floor and walls. A mulberry glazed ceramic object, the exact miniature of Pier Francesco Orsinis “Leaning House”, facing through the window to the wild garden. The building is the only one standing straight in contrast to the white cube. With a simple, but consequent spatial intervention Henke tilted the inside of the space as well as the water tank on top in a four degree angle.

Whereas the alluded sculptural garden projects left the human scale as a model behind Henke confuses the relation between the monumental and the miniature. The real size water tank seems to belong to the same dimension as the larger-than-life plinth, the life sized lily pads seem monumental in relation to the ceramic house which tilted symmetry is duplicated in the interior of actual exhibitions space.