Stefan Papco’s sculptural practice is intimately connected to mountaineering, which he has been practicing for many years. He is an experienced climber, and his direct knowledge of climbing as mental and physical discipline, body language, and choreography, constitutes an integral part of his work. Climbing is not about visual paradigms; it is performative and deeply grounded in the body, movement, and gravity and the sculptural objects Papco creates introduce his stark experience and the vocabulary of mountaineering into art.
In the framework of this exhibition, we invited other artists to contribute their notes to several topics: verticality and its politics, gravity and perspective, the terrestrial and the cosmic. These artists include Kapwani Kiwanga, Wesley Meuris and Sophie Ristelhueber. They generously agreed to engage with the questions raised, as well as with Július Koller’s fictional institution located between the earth and the cosmos.