Sofia Hultén's Comprehensive Exhibition at Tinguely Museum Explores Everyday Objects and Pattern Recognition

Sofia Hultén's most comprehensive exhibition to date, 'Here's the Answer, What's the Question?', ran from 24 January to 1 May at Tinguely Museum in Basel. The Swedish-born, Berlin-based artist reimagines everyday objects through manipulation and transformation. Her work involves found items like grey hoodies, particleboard, and workshop shelving units, which she alters through cutting, painting, or reshaping. Key installations include 'History in Imaginary Time' (2012), 'Particle Boredom' (2016–17), and 'Nu Cave' (2011). Hultén's videos, such as 'Altered Fates' (2013) and 'Nonsequences' (2013), perform philosophical concepts in humorous scenarios. 'Pattern Recognition' (2017), a wall sculpture, references Russian computer scientist Mikhail Moiseevich Bongard's diagrams used for AI pattern recognition benchmarks. The exhibition title invites viewers to formulate questions, emphasizing art as a cyclical process without clear purpose. Hultén's approach contrasts with other artists using found objects by focusing on time, change, and possibility. The show was reviewed in the May 2018 issue of ArtReview.