Open; Wait

Open; Wait is a multi-part conversation that begins between the sculptures of Margrét H. Blöndal and the drawings of Silvia Bächli. In both their first exhibition together and both artists’ first exhibition with i8, minimal gestures accumulate to become an installation that gently usurps, manipulates, and re-opens the territory in front of us. Each artist’s approach to shaping space provides a polyphony of rhythms and different orientations that can be elusive and entangling. In the midst of this is a balance, a tipping point on which rests the veil of experience and each of our own understandings of the personal politic. Open; Wait is an abstract conversation about reality, and a hard look into the void.

Silvia Bächli is based in Basel and Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include Far apart - close together at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; she represented Switzerland at the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009. In 2008, she undertook a four-month residency in Seydisfjordur with Eric Hattan, resulting in the collaborative photographic series and publication Blindhædir.

Margrét H. Blöndal is based in Reykjavik. Recent solo exhibitions include Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Texas, and Reykjavik Art Museum. Recent group exhibitions include Momentum, Moss, Norway, Manifesta 7, and Kunsthaus Baselland. In 2009, she was the artist in residence at the Laurenz Haus Stiftung, Basel.

Chris Fite-Wassilak is a writer, curator and critic based in London. Past curatorial projects include include the Hayward Touring exhibition Quiet Revolution, and All Humans Do (co-curated with Aoife Tunney) at White Box, New York and The Model, Sligo, Ireland. Forthcoming projects include the performance event Pre-Cast with Dennis McNulty at Blackwall, East London in September 2012.