An exhibition usually suggests a route, even if no one prescribes it: you enter a room, pause before a work, move on. In theatre, by contrast, duration and sequence are usually fixed; the audience shares a common beginning. Özgür Kar wants to shift this order at the Kunsthalle Basel. His exhibition ‘Rock Bottom’ is intended to turn the institution into a stage – and lead visitors through a production spanning several rooms.
From 30 October 2026, a new work by the artist, who was born in 1992, will be shown there. Kar combines video, sculpture, animation and sound. The Kunsthalle Basel’s announcement describes ‘Rock Bottom’ as a theatrical production; the exhibition spaces become not merely neutral containers for individual objects, but part of a staging. Ahead of the opening, there is as yet no firm information about the specific installation or the sequence of scenes. What is certain is that the architecture is intended to play a role, and the route through the exhibition is part of the concept.
Images That Occupy Space
For Kar, as the Kunsthalle explains, video is not primarily a cinematic tool, but a sculptural medium. The moving image thus does more than convey a narrative. It takes shape in space: as a surface, a light source and an event unfolding in time, which visitors can approach, view from a distance or miss altogether. Together with sound and animation, it creates a work that cannot necessarily be pinned down to a single viewpoint or a single duration.
In Kar’s practice to date, the works revolve around loneliness, longing and uncertainty. Their visual language, according to the Kunsthalle’s description, moves between the grotesque and the tender. This is a tension close to theatre: a character can seem both comic and vulnerable; a voice can create intimacy without the person behind it becoming tangible. For ‘Rock Bottom’, Kar has developed new characters as well as his own script and score, according to the announcement. How these elements come together in space will only become clear on visiting.
Who Determines the Sequence?
The stage metaphor here is more than a catchy image. A play usually focuses attention on a shared action; an exhibition allows visitors to turn their gaze elsewhere, retrace their steps or skip a room. When the institution becomes a stage, these freedoms are unsettled. Is there a sequence one should follow? Must one wait until a scene ends? And what remains of a narrative if one enters halfway through or hears it from another room?
The exhibition promises no simple alignment of museum and theatre. It is precisely the difference between the two forms that makes it an intriguing prospect: in a museum, one’s own time is part of the experience. A staging in several parts can make this freedom palpable – or put it to the test. Whether a shared dramatic arc will emerge, or many individual paths through the exhibition, cannot be determined in advance.
Between Performance and Viewing
Kar’s work belongs to a strand of contemporary art in which moving images are increasingly conceived as spatial situations. The screen is then not merely a window onto another world; its position, the darkness of the room and the duration of viewing are part of the work. With ‘Rock Bottom’, Kar takes this thinking in an explicitly theatrical direction. The Kunsthalle Basel calls it his first institutional solo exhibition in Switzerland. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with Spike Island in Bristol and the Galeria Municipal do Porto.
The title suggests a low point, but what it refers to in the production remains open for now. The venue is certain: the Kunsthalle Basel. According to matching information on the artist’s website and in the announcement on e-flux, ‘Rock Bottom’ is scheduled to run from 30 October 2026 to 24 January 2027. For visitors, this means, for now, above all an invitation not to take their own pace for granted: in this exhibition, even the question of when to move on could become part of the act of looking.
Original reviewed by the editors · 26 October 2026
