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<\/p>\nThe British artist and film-maker Steve McQueen presents his most abstract work to date with the light-and-sound sculpture Bass (2024). The piece marks a compelling turn in the artist\u2019s ongoing exploration of presence and the politics of representation. It premiered at Dia Art Foundation\u2019s outpost in Beacon, New York, last year and is now at the Laurenz Foundation\u2019s Schaulager in Basel, where its new location invites further interpretation and resonance.<\/p>\n
McQueen\u2019s collaboration with the\u00a0two foundations began in 2022, when organisers invited the award-winning film-maker to create a video as the jointly commissioned work. But the piece came to have a more conceptual bend, as McQueen ruminated on the abstract elements of his practice and the transcendental power of light and sound to provoke a meditative state.<\/p>\n
The work bathes its environment with changing ambient lighting over a three-hour loop and features a sonic component that references the Middle Passage\u2014the harrowing transatlantic voyage to the Americas endured by enslaved Africans\u2014although viewers are not encouraged to read into the didactics of the piece. McQueen hopes people become \u201cparticipants\u201d, bringing their own presence and narrative to the experience. (He asks that they refrain from taking photographs in order to be fully present.)<\/p>\n
Responsive and fluid<\/p>\n
At Dia Beacon, Bass was installed in the museum\u2019s cavernous 30,000 sq. ft basement, with subtle looping pulses of light and sound engulfing the viewer and the space\u2019s minimalist architecture. But McQueen does not view his piece as a fixed composition with specific technical and architectural requirements; rather, it is a sculpture responsive to new meanings depending on where it is\u00a0displayed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a fluidity in the work, because it\u2019s about sound and light, so there\u2019s no place where it cannot work,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a sculpture that could go anywhere. The specifics of the piece are fluid, because there are no boundaries for sound and light. It\u00a0will leak into any aspect. There\u2019s no\u00a0measurement.\u201d<\/p>\n
McQueen emphasises that Bass \u201casks the participant to create feeling\u00a0within the context of the space\u201d and that viewers \u201cwill understand it only when they see it\u201d. It can be installed in a variety of different contexts, since each viewer brings unexpected \u201csensibilities\u201d to the work. \u201cAs an audience member, I feel there is a situation where the viewer can no longer think about themselves,\u201d McQueen says. \u201cYou become an important ingredient in the understanding of the piece\u2014you and other people. But I won\u2019t spoil the\u00a0surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n
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McQueen says that the viewer is \u201can important ingredient\u201d in the work Photo: Pati Grabowicz; courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n
While McQueen is hesitant to give specifics, he is interested in how viewers will choose to either navigate\u00a0or remain static in the new\u00a0space. At the Schaulager, Bass spans three floors\u00a0of the museum, including the galleries and the full\u00a0height of the atrium. The space is\u00a0\u201cthe perfect fit\u201d, McQueen says, but\u00a0the differences in the presentation are \u201cmore technological\u201d\u00a0adjustments. Its ethos remains the same.<\/p>\n
Ambient sonic component<\/p>\n
Apart from the architectural adaptations made at the Schaulager, there have been no modifications to Bass. It features the same ambient sonic component, which McQueen produced with the bassist Marcus Miller and other musicians who played both electric and acoustic basses and a ngoni, a traditional West African string instrument.<\/p>\n
\u201cA majority of the time when we listen to sound or music, it\u2019s through an iPhone or something more internal, but this is definitely external,\u201d McQueen says. \u201cIt is a very visual presentation of sound and colour. I\u2019m excited about how that transformation will take place at the\u00a0Schaulager.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dia, in collaboration with Laurenz and the designer Irma Boom, published the book Steve McQueen: Bass (2024) to accompany the premiere of the work. A second publication released earlier this month focuses on the presentation at the Schaulager, which was a \u201chand-in-glove situation\u201d for the work, according to McQueen, and provides \u201ca critical reaction to Bass as it was at Dia\u201d.<\/p>\n
McQueen rose to fame as a Turner Prize winner in 1999 and represented Britain in the 2009 Venice Biennale. He later earned an Academy Award for his film 12 Years a Slave (2013), becoming the first Black director to win Best Picture at the Oscars. McQueen\u2019s work is held in major collections worldwide, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and\u00a0the Museum of Modern Art in New York.<\/p>\n