pool8

Bechtler Stiftung presents pool8, a new site-specific work by Nora Turato. Conceived for the exhibition space and completed on site, the work marks the beginning of the eighth cycle of Turato’s ongoing pool series and brings her engagement with language into a new spatial and bodily dimension.

Nora Turato is one of the most distinctive artistic voices of her generation. Language is the starting point and central reference of her practice, which spans text-based installations, prints, books and performances. Since 2017, she has developed her ongoing pool series — periodic cycles in which she collects, filters and reconfigures the language of contemporary culture. Drawing on material from media, advertising, social platforms, conversations, headlines and everyday speech, Turato channels the constant stream of language that surrounds us into works that reflect on the cultural and societal shifts of the present.

In the earlier pools, language is not simply content, but material: something to be repeated, staged, designed, performed, distorted and, at times, emptied out. With pool8, Turato takes this investigation into a new spatial and bodily dimension. The work begins the eighth cycle of the pool series, but it is not simply a continuation of the previous pools. It marks an essential shift within her practice: language is reduced, spatially framed and made perceptible through sound, darkness and bodily perception.

pool8 was conceived for the exhibition space and completed on site. The recordings took place in the space, and the sound responds to its acoustics. The process was shaped by uncertainty, responsiveness and an openness to unpredictable outcomes. In this sense, the conditions under which the work came into being are closely connected to the conditions through which visitors encounter it.

Within Bechtler Stiftung, pool8 also forms a clear counterpoint to Walter De Maria’s The 2000 Sculpture: a work of light, seriality and visual order. Turato’s work unfolds under fundamentally different conditions — through darkness, voice, sound and bodily orientation. Both works engage with repetition, space and duration, but from different poles of experience.

pool8 resists a purely descriptive approach. The work unfolds as a spatial and bodily experience that calls for attention, presence and openness. Each encounter with the work may unfold differently: the voice, the darkness, the movement through the space and the return from it may shift with every experience.

Nora Turato (*1991, Zagreb) is an artist based in Amsterdam. The breadth of her work encompasses text-based installations, prints, books, and performances, placing language at the centre of her practice. Drawing on collected language as well as original text, she develops works that engage contemporary forms of communication, circulation, and expression.
Recent solo exhibitions include ICA, London (2025), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2024), Kunsthalle Wien (2024), Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles (2024), and MoMA, New York (2022). Selected group exhibitions include SITE Santa Fe (2025), MUDAM, Luxembourg (2024), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022), Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2022), and Kunsthalle Basel (2021).