Maria Loboda
The Year of Living Dangerously
curated by Samuel Leuenberger

Art Basel Parcours
June 13 – 19 2022
St. Alban-Rheinweg 1, Basel

The project was a collaboration between Galeria Wschód, Thomas Schulte, Berlin and Maisterravalbuena, Madrid.

There might have been something of a disaster of, well, monumental proportions that came to pass under Wettsteinbrücke in the city of Basel on the occasion of the world’s most esteemed art fair. Seen from above, or from across the river, the situation draws attention – it seems like a delivery-went-wrong; a cargo, destined for Messeplatz, capsized on a pebbled strand of the Rhine, below one of the two bridges linking the historical neighborhood of the city with the Kleinbasel district. It is tantamount to an art historical crime scene: a cluster of sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Dubuffet, and Jeff Koons, washed by the rolling waves, bleaching in the sun.

Maria Loboda called on a number of artists whose practice redefined the thinking about sculpture throughout the 20th century. She then had their works replicated, to scale, to stage this otherwise impossible scenario. The sculptures wade in the water, but also yield to it, as does the whole concept of Loboda: visible, or less so, dependent on the ebb and flow of the river. It’s less of a mockery of the monetary value and more of an unconditional invitation to indulge in thinking of the double, secret, or hazardous life of sculptures.

Among Loboda’s earlier works was based on historically acknowledged sculptures was a take on Jean Arp’s Resting Leaf (Feuille se reposant) of 1959, which, in her own words, she felt she had to “remove and protect” from its insulated, pristine setting. The object ended up tossed into a bog, in close proximity to the site it was displayed in. Arguably, not an obvious way of saving an artwork. This sculpture of Loboda is included among the works surrounded by driftwood on the Rhein and others that share the same fate.

They also have common origins, in that all of them are part of a stream of thought that took its point of departure in natural landscapes, and animal shapes, including those of humans. And all of them are far detached from the commonly understood idea of an original, cast and recast, created in series, continuously reinvented, as with Constantin Brancusi’s, Bird in Space (1928), or endlessly replicated as with Jeff Koons’s, Balloon Swan (Magenta), 2019. What is it then that Loboda deemed so important to save these sculptures from at this point in time?

The Year of Living Dangerously (2022) is as much about the unfortunate fate of those objects in this particular situation as it is about entertaining the thought of them living a multitude of other existences. Loboda did not prepare the scene as a stage set – rather, she set it in its slow motion and is complicit in it. It is not a gesture of rebellion but one of liberation. That of looking differently at otherwise revered objects which are no longer affixed to their secure positions and open to the passage of time, washing them ceaselessly like the waves.

Krzysztof Kościuczuk

Maria Loboda (b. 1979 in Krakow, PL) studied at the renowned Städelschule in Frankfurt a.M., where she was a student of Mark Leckey from 2003 to 2008. In 2025 she became a Professor for sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nürnberg Germany. In 2020/2021 she was a guest lecturer at the Intermedia Department of the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznan, Poland. From 2015 to 2016, she taught as a guest lecturer at Hochschule der Bildenden Künste, Zurich. She is the first awardee of the Otilie Roederstein Scholarship of the Ministry of Culture in Hessia in 2022. She also was one of the artistic leaders to Volcano Extravaganza 2019. In 2012, she received the Edward Steichen Award, comprised of a six-month residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City. In the same year she also participated in the International Residency at Les Recollets in Paris. She received a scholarship of the Hessian Cultural Foundation for London in 2009/2010 as well as a scholarship of the Cultural Foundation of Dresdner Bank in 2010. Loboda’s wide-ranging exhibition activities encompass Art Basel Parcours (2022), the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), Taipei Biennial (2014), and documenta 13 (2012). Important solo exhibitions include Fridericianum, Kassel (2025), Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt a. M. (2023), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt a.M. (2018/19), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2019), Kunsthalle Basel (2017), Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne (2017).