Mirko Baselgia@ Vias d’Art Pontresina

Mirko Baselgia is part of the outdoor exhibition "Vias d'Art Pontrsina" in Engadin.

For 20 years, works of art have been created in the mountain village of Pontresina in the Engadin that are made especially for this location. Artists from Graubünden and other regions of Switzerland provide insights into the culture, history and developments of this culturally-minded community with their art installations. Nine renowned artists from Graubünden and Switzerland are exhibiting their works at the 7th Triennial for Contemporary Art, Kunstwege.

With Guido Baselgia, Mirko Baselgia, Evelina Cajacob, Andriu Deplazes, Christoph Draeger, Sara Masüger, Ursula Palla, Jules Spinatsch andAndrea Todisco.

27.06 - 10.10.2026

Stages of dissolution, 2026. spruce three-layer panels, Swiss stone pine veneer, steel, 330 × 136 × 136 cm

Stages of dissolution approaches sculpture not as a fixed or completed object, but as a temporal and material process. The work continuously changes throughout the entire duration of the exhibition and only gradually reaches the state implied by its title toward the end of the exhibition period.

The sculpture unfolds as a vertical sequence of different states. From bottom to top, the structure shifts from closed, dense and load-bearing volumes toward increasingly open, fragile and unstable formations. Stability does not appear as a permanent condition, but rather as a temporary state within an ongoing transformation.

The construction consists of spruce three-layer panels onto which Swiss stone pine veneer elements are mounted using metal staples. These layered components form a structure whose integrity progressively dissolves toward the upper sections of the work. Compact areas become porous, fragmented and increasingly lose their cohesion.

A crucial aspect of the work is that the sculpture remains fully exposed to weather conditions throughout the entire duration of Kunstwege Pontresina. Rain, sunlight, wind, humidity, temperature fluctuations and dryness directly affect the material. The wood reacts, bends, expands, contracts and continuously changes its tension and form.

The sculpture therefore never exists in a stable or final state. Instead, it appears as a body in continuous transition, assuming different conditions each day and under changing climatic circumstances. The opening of the exhibition does not mark the completion of the work, but merely the beginning of its visibility in public space.

In its temporal openness, the sculpture resists the classical notion of the autonomous and completed object. Rather than representing dissolution symbolically, the work allows transformation to unfold physically and materially over time. stages of dissolution understands dissolution not as loss or ending, but as an ongoing state of transformation embedded within the material itself.