I, You, You, Me, We 2020

In 2020 Ralph Bürgin realized the artwork I, You, You, Me, We on a five-meter-high retaining wall of the Birsig River upon winning a competition launched by the Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt [governmental institution promoting the arts]. The artwork entails five disc-shaped faces (140 cm) conceived as bas-reliefs and inspired by historical sculptural heads or gargoyles on building façades in Basel or the figures typically found on Basel fountains. With their round eyes and mouths, the faces gaze across the river in a mask-like, reduced manner. They all originate from the same mold and are made of tinted concrete whose color varies subtly from head to head.

Ralph Bürgin (b. 1980 in Basel CH), awarded the 2023 Sponsorship Award of the Alexander Clavel Foundation, lives in Basel and works in his studio across the border in nearby French Alsace. Creating mainly through the media of painting and sculpture, his primarily motifs include the head and the body, which he fragments and plays with proportions. In 2020 he realized the artwork I, You, You, Me, We on a five-meter-high retaining wall along the riverbank of the Birsig in Basel.