In the second spring variation, only works in which "text" appears are included. When viewing the exhibition, it quickly becomes clear that the texts in the individual works take on very different functions. The works in the exhibition allow an in-depth look at the manifestations of text in art, from posters to digital realisation, from found objects to appropriation.

By Klodin Erb, this year's winner of the Swiss Grand Award for Art / Prix Meret Oppenheim, the first room features seven paintings created in 2017, the year following the completion of her film The Sweet Lemon Ballad as its fabricated posters. The paintings contain subtle references to individual film scenes; one clearly refers to the film production company Paramount Pictures.

The middle room is dedicated to works by Anne-Lise Coste, who is presenting the major solo exhibition Poem Police at Kunsthaus Baselland until 17 July 2022. After explicitly refraining from works with texts in her last gallery exhibition in 2021, various text works are now gathered together. Works from different creative periods are shown. Two groups of works are dominated by the material cardboard. A wonderful 16-part group of felt-tip pen drawings contains performative aspects and autobiographical references, including a magnificent self-portrait in pencil of Anne-Lise in Happiness.

Bethan Huws’ watercolour Late Spring is not only an excellent fit for the season, but with its depiction of Marcel Duchamp's bottle dryer with delicate leaf ends, it also hangs accordingly to the 1953 Dada poster and exhibition catalogue designed by Marcel Duchamp for the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. A work by the performance artist Dora Garcia, which could be described as an assisted readymade, concludes the group of works on this wall.

The fourth room of the gallery is dominated by two meticulously painted pictures by Sebastian Utzni from the Prediction Paintings group. To understand these conceptual works, one has to backtrack a little: before starting to work on the Prediction Paintings, Utzni asked various art world players which paintings would achieve record sales in 2019. He then used a computer programme to analyse the colours used in the paintings mentioned by the experts. The programme filtered out five colours from each painting's colour spectrum. Similar colours were combined until five remained. The programme uses the colour system of the 1625 standardised RAL colours. The upper half of the Prediction Paintings can be read like infographics: The size of the circle indicates the frequency of the colour used. Since each RAL colour is assigned a unique number as well as a description, the percentage of use and the name of the colours can be read in the lower part. The painted wording of the analysis in the lower part of the picture reads like bot poetry. Next to these works is the painting DH by David Hominal, which can be described as a self-portrait because the artist stamped his initials on the silvery ground. Opposite is a multiple by Ian Hamilton Finlay, which alludes to the turmoil of the French Revolution through the term Thermidor and a severed ear of wheat. Thermidor was the month in the calendar of the French Revolution when the summer heat was at its most intense and the grain at its ripest. Moreover, in 1794, it was the month when Robespierre and his political allies met their deaths by guillotine.

The exhibition "Text" brings together a variety of manifestations of texts in artistic works. It becomes clear that "text" fulfils a wide variety of functions in works of art: Often it merely gives the title, sometimes it explains the picture and sometimes it becomes a constitutive component of the artistic work. For each work, the task of the text must be determined anew: We invite the audience to this exploration tour in the second spring variation.

Participating artists from the gallery:

Anne-Lise Coste (*1973 in Marignane, near Marseille, lives and works in Sète, F)

Klodin Erb (*1963 in Winterthur, lives and works in Zurich)

Franziska Furter (*1972 in Zurich, lives and works in Basel)

Jamie Isenstein (*1975 in Portland, Oregon, USA)

Sebastian Utzni (*1981 in Augsburg, lives and works in Zurich)

and guests:

 Marcel Duchamp (*1887 in Blainville-Crevon F, died 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, F)

Philippe Decrauzat (*1974 in Lausanne, lives and works in Lausanne und Paris)

Doria García (*1965 in Valladolid, lives and works in Barcelona)

Ian Hamilton Finlay (*1925 in Nassau Bahamas, died 2006 in Edinburgh)

Richard Hamilton (*1922 in London, died 2011 in Northend, GB)

David Hominal (*1976 in Evian F, lives and works in Berlin)

Bethan Huws (*1961 in Bangor, Wales, lives and works in Paris und Berlin)

Dieter Roth (*1932 in Hannover, died 1998 in Basel)

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