Her chair-like objects in space consist of a plastic membrane enclosing the air trapped inside. Incredibly, the sharp-edged aluminum plates passing through these bubbles do not tear them to shreds. On the contrary, the painted metal functions more like a unifying element. Being transparent, the identical air cushions lend the three paintings the air of a mystery revealed. They may be floating on the fluid patterns, but they are also the force supporting them. As much as they cry out to be sat on, there is a risk that a jeans rivet, say, might pierce them, or that a body might upset their fragile equilibrium.

Flora Mottini circumscribes non-places, the airlocks separating two destinations, the spaces we pass through in transit. Geography notwithstanding, these are places which tend to look alike and whose characteristics can be replicated and transferred at will. The chairs are self-contained capsules. The parallel set-up of the installation, moreover, makes it a capsule in its own right: the interior of an aircraft, a train, a waiting room at the station, the hull of a ship – means of transport that dissolve here-ness, that make temporary way stations indistinguishable and ephemeral. There is something nostalgic about visualizing travel right now, when circulation is at best limited and often impossible. Equilibrium is fragile. (Nina Arnold).

The exhibition curators selected Flora Mottini from among the graduates of the Work.Master 2020 program at the Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD) in Geneva to be part of the NEW HEADS initiative.