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a glimpse into Whatever Gets You Through The Night, 
a limited edition (only 50) posterzine created by MARC ZENHÄUSERN
featuring the work of ten different artists including BENOÎT BODHUIN, FABIAN UNTERNÄHRER, and OF THE HOLY BLOOD among others
more info here

image © wfw

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exhibition view from Artist’s Artist at Centre PasquArt in Bienne/Biel with the work by DAN GRAHAM, Anamorphic Surfaces (2007-2008), two-way mirror glass and perforated stainless steel, 230 x 460 x 460 cm

and by Swiss artist JEAN-FREDERIC SCHNYDER (in the background), Coucher de soleil sur le lac de Zug, 1-163 (1996), oil on wood, 21 x 30 cm

seen on Wednesday, March 6, 2013
image © wfw

Carlatides II, 1986
installation view at Centre PasquArt, Bienne, March 2013
image © wfw

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Carlatides II (detail), 1986
installation view at Centre PasquArt, Bienne, March 2013
image © wfw

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Carlatides II (detail), 1986
installation view at Centre PasquArt, Bienne, March 2013
image © wfw

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Fragment am Horizont (detail), 1999
plexiglas, Lifochrome, wood console

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Fragment am Horizont, 1999
plexiglas, Lifochrome, wood console

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Bruits de Surface, 1995
video projection on glasses filled with milk

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selected works from the series Zeichen der Veränderung (signs of change), 2001/02
silver dye-bleach process, 167 x 129 cm

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Dans le cadre des histoires… le reflet, 1997
black/white and ilfochrome photographs, 6 parts in metal frames
each: 96 x 258 cm

Dans le cadre des histoires… des chemins des oliviers, 1999
black/white and ilfochrome photographs, 6 parts in metal frames
each: 115 x 305 cm

Dans le cadre des histoires… d’Alcantara, 1997
ilfochrome photographs, 4 parts in metal frames
each: 120 x 210 cm

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both: La nuit des Temps, 1999
1185, 190 x 118 cm & 1070, 190 x 107 cm
photograph, white wax

all images courtesy the artist

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SILVIE DEFRAOUI is both a Swiss pionner of videos/multimedia art and an incredibly productive artist. Basically what you see above represents 0.1% of her work she created from 1975 with her husband CHERIF until his death in 1994.

From the end of 1970, they created their first video projects after having experimented with slide projections and Super 8 videos. Quite quickly they became known for projecting found imagery or personal documents onto a lot of surfaces and objects. Since then, they never stopped working on projects that involve the perceptual, narrative, and poetic possibilities by using technological arrangements to physically render the slippery nature of an individual perception and memory.

SILVIE DEFRAOUI continues to work with the couple’s long-term project which they called Archive du Futur (Future Archives), an evolving archive that contains their entire artistic output.

Good news: the work of SILVIE and CHERIF DEFRAOUI is currently part of the exhibition Artist’s Artist at Centre PasquArt in Bienne/Biel, Switzerland until April 7, 2013

Break my body, hold my bones, 2009

exhibition view at Le Spot, Le Havre, 2009

Happy house II, 2012
polystyrene, wood, rope, tape, painting, serreflex, gunny 250 x 100 x 15 cm
production La Salle de Bains, Lyon

Campagne/ Campagnes, exhibition view at Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux, 2013

A fist is fast and Jimmie’s cast Hang me, 2010
wood, polystyrene beam, basket ball ring, piano wires, painting, 250 x 60 x 30 cm

Hang Wire, 2010
piano keys, crossbar, curtains, pebbledash, painting, 200x250x350

Move on over here, slow it down, 2010
ropes, painting, coating, bars, parquet, partitions, railway crossbeam, ondobitume

Starving in the belly of a whale, 2009
Pine staircase, venetian blind strips, nylon security straps, paint, 300 x 400 x 145 cm

all images courtesy of STEPHANIE CHERPIN (unless otherwise stated)

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The works of French artist STEPHANIE CHERPIN inhabit space in a dramatic way by manipulating modest materials, textures, scales and subtle colors. Her works depart from wastelands, construction materials, post-industrial landscape and other undefined areas to offer a sculptural encounters between humans, technology, nature, the parallel experience of time and the spontaneous impulses that some places generate and embody.

Assembling her sculptures quickly and intuitively, they become distant memories of objects fusing creation and destruction rather than faithful constructions. Furthermore her installations actively engage viewers by drawing them among, and around obstacles in much the same way that the city does on a daily basis.

Her sculptures create tension, show their teeth, they deliberately obstruct the passage and trip us up, take over a space like weeds that one can never quite eradicate, they spill over and provoke, and in this sense evoke a multitude of parallels with grunge culture. - PAUL BERNARD

And good news: STEPHANIE CHERPIN‘s first monograph has just been released by Les Presses du Réel, more info here

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013
installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013
installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013

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K log 2, Separating Wheat from Chaff #1, 2013
Marble, digital picture frame, material from portfolio, inkjet on clear adhesive vinyl, 43.2 x 63.5 x 2.5 cm

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013
installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013

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installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013
all: tempered glass, hardware, inkjet on perforated vinyl, 153.7 x 241.3 x 38.1 cm

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installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013
all: tempered glass, hardware, inkjet on perforated vinyl, 153.7 x 241.3 x 38.1 cm

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013
installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013

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The Intern as Phantom Limb (Back view.) 2013
Tempered glass, hardware, inkjet on perforated vinyl, drain hair, rapid prototype:scanned seaweed – Chelsea market, 158.8 x 246.4 x 38.1 cm

all images courtesy BEN SCHUMACHER

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I grew up in a rural area of Ontario, only seeing sculpture in magazine or on the internet. My first sculpture was actually made to be photographed, and then destroyed. After this I worked on sculpture that could be seen from one vantage point based on architectural restriction, so that the experience was similar to looking at a photograph. Many of my current sculptures are freestanding screens. (…) Digital printing on the screen inverts the implied silence of the material. The digital prints on screen become a surface used to further propel the documentation of a previous works, as well as an additive surface that allows flattened views of adjacent works in the room. – BEN SCHUMACHER in conversation with BOB NICKAS, Mousse Magazine 2012

Through images and sculptural installations, BEN SCHUMACHER explores the interstices of object and image along with diverse ways to conceptualize and present art, both in-situ and online. Clearly preoccupied with controlling the conditions in which his works are viewed (he also customizes the image documentation of all his sculptural output), he is also interested in the capacity of those conditions to challenge the authority of the images.

A few days ago, SCHUMACHER opened D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, an exhibition at New York’s Bortolami gallery. The show includes architectural models, marble sculptures of cable management racks; lights made from reconfigured Ikea fixtures wrapped in handmade leather sleeves; a series of free-standing glass sculptures with three-dimensional composite prints and vinyl imagery; small figurative paintings; still packaged Ikea shelves set in plexi boxes with inserted rapid prototypes; functioning tablet screens set into marble slabs.

Additionally he collaborated with New York based architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. An employee from the firm will work in the gallery for the duration of the show, restoring early models from competitions and realized projects. At the office of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SCHUMACHER installed several works available to the public through images.

Both ‘presentations’ follow BEN SCHUMACHER‘s long-standing interest in the problematics of representation, image production and dissemination. All these different media feed off, reinforce, and disrupt one another, fashioning a composite landscape that reverberates with echoes and citations.

➝ D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie  is currently on view at Bortolami, New York and is running through March 30, 2013.

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Hobby, 2012 (wood, metal, jeans, foam, clay objects) and Standard Type, 2012 (inkjet print, handmade wood frames)
both by JAN KIEFER and part of his solo exhibition entitled Guaud*
at Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz (CH)
seen on Sunday, February 24, 2013
image © wfw

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 * on view until March 31, 2013

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installation view from “NO; NO;                                    H” by TOBIAS MADISON
as seen on Friday, February 22, 2013 at Kunsthalle Zürich
image © wfw

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this exhibition is running through March 23, 2013

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Moon, detail of video still, 2007

Untitled, 2012, digital C Print, dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, NY; Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin

The Donut Gang, video still 2009

Untitled, 2012
Color pencil, chalkboard paint and inkjet print on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

photo: URI ARAN

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Goodnight Ned, 2011
Graphite, pen, ink jet print and spray paint, on archival paper
Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise

Curiouser and Curiouser: Uri Aran at Gavin Brown’s, 2012

Untitled, cereal box, sheet metal, polyurethane, wood stain, glue & chocolate, 2006-2012

Untitled, detail from “by foot, by car, by bus”, 2012, mixed media
Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York

Dogs and Cats, 2008, coconut, cup and saucer, trim, acrylic

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Untitled, 2010, computer drawing-ink jet print on paper

Untitled (Horse Drawing), 2010, courtesy of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Mother’s Tankstation

Untitled, 2010, book, glass, pencil eraser, and cookies

Untitled Drawing (for The Ascent of Man), 2009, computer drawing and mixed media on paper

Untitled (Bus), 2008 (detail), mixed media, dimensions variable

Untitled Drawing (for The Ascent of Man), 2009, computer drawing and inkjet on paper

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installation views at Kunsthalle Zürich
images © Stefan Altenburger Photography Zurich, 2013

Untitled, 2010, Inkjet print and pencil on paper

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I mean orange, installation views at Studiolo, June – July 2012
in collaboration with ELIZABETH NEEL

all images courtesy the artist

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Born in Israel and based in New York, URI ARAN works in different mediums, such as sculpture, drawing, and video, to investigate the relationship between particular material forms and narratives.

His installations often feature seemingly chaotic arrangements of found objects installed on tabletops. Appropriated images and familiar everyday objects – including, for example, eggs, bottle openers, passport photos, sawdust, Swiss army knives, cookies and pizza boxes – are humble objects that find their way into ARAN’s work: things that are part of a language of our shared experience of the world.

However absurd and surreal situations take place at a regular pace; collections of images, portraits next to animal pictures, plastic grapes, pizza boxes and wet cardboards, revealing that eventually the initial chaos is ordered into a multitude of meanings.

Good news: Kunsthalle Zürich is currently presenting here, here and here, the first comprehensive solo institutional exhibition by URI ARAN. The exhibition is on view until March 24, 2013.

Courtesy MIKE GOLDY

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That singular moment of synthesis- the artificial shutter release, where trend, product and lifestyle are conflated into singular representations- seems to go on and repeat forever; narratives expand, overlap, collapse and switch places. - MIKE GOLDBY

Toronto based artist and curator MIKE GOLDBY examines, through staged photographs, videos and sculptural installations, social network structures and how their image-making strategies are co-opted as vehicles for personal branding. GOLDBY considers the liminal space behind the lens and before the screen expanding in this way the experience involved in contemporary identity-construction and representation strategies that often go unspoken in today’s post-Internet conditions.

Jardin d’Hiver, 2013
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
installation view at Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, February 2013
image © wfw

Jardin d’Hiver, 2013 (detail)
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
image © wfw

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Jardin d’Hiver, 2013 (detail)
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
image © wfw -

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Jardin d’Hiver, 2013 (detail)
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
image © wfw

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Jardin d’Hiver, 2013 (detail)
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
image © wfw

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Brazilian Gardens, 2013
photography, dia-show, glass, metall

Golden Horizon, 2013
glass, metall

installation view at Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, February 2013
image © wfw

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Tropical Darkness, 2013 courtesy ADRIEN MISSIKA -

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In his first institutional solo exhibition – entitled A Walk In The Park – in the german part of Switzerland, ADRIEN MISSIKA orchestrated a landscape of plants, mirrored panels, projections, prints and architectures, arranged according to his very personal rules by which imagination and research, fact and fiction, reflected on each other and brought about a certain ambiguity, fascinating viewers and challenging them to question their own view of the world. Many references leapt out in this group of works – from Brazilian landscape architect and artist ROBERTO BURLE MARX* (1909-1994) to modernist architecture with its glass and steel constructions – but MISSIKA’s precision and reflection made things breathe in a way that was clearly his own.

My work is image-centered. It evolves as a permanent investigation through representation of the border between fiction and reality. I investigate the very classical field of landscape representation as compared to how humans shape landscape: through architecture. In between, you have archeology and geology. These are my interests in terms of content; I then apply these interests to a sort of image historiography. I build links and set up formal experiments. I focus in particular on collective memory (media history, societal values, etc.) and its influence on personal feelings or recognition processes (déjà vu). - ADRIEN MISSIKA for Kaleidoscope

The installation Brazilian Gardens (2013) offered a series of photographs of plants and gardens. They are shown on a display system of sculptural elements in the form of metal panels. MISSIKA has adapted this form of presentation from a system used in the botanical department of the Indian Museum in Calcutta.

Upstairs, in the skylight room of the Kunsthaus, Jardin d’Hiver (2013) comprised three bamboo towers supporting flower containers made of synthetic resin, six mirrored window panes, five flower beds and seven species of plants. For this installation, ADRIEN MISSIKA has transported BURLE MARX*’s codes of garden design into the museum space. For the construction of the bamboo towers, he is using the Asian knot technique of scaffolding, expanding the architectural space into a vertical dimension. This formal element is often used in compacted city planning as well as utopian concepts of vertical gardens and green cities. Further reminiscences to architecture are made with discarded, mirrored window panes from a modernist building, forming the horizon of the exhibition space. 

The process is different for almost every one of my projects. I build up rules for a work and apply them programmatically. On principle, I do not reveal the secrets of all steps in my process. I think my work should be autonomous at a certain level. It should speak for itself. I like the fact that it has several levels of reading and multiple points of entry. As a spectator, when I visit a show by an artist I really don᾽t know, I like the freshness of discovering this work with no established universe. Then I like to read what is proposed and confront my initial feelings and ideas. In the same way, I only reveal my process as a second layer, in a different temporality than that original observation. - ADRIEN MISSIKA for Kaleidoscope

ADRIEN MISSIKA successfully conferred sculptural qualities – a sense of physical density and formal panache – to each of the elements in this exhibition. Using photography and installation, he collected the elements of a landscape and confronted the visitor with a weird version of our own -artificial – sceneries.

What the artist invites us to look at is perhaps how the world as it is presented to us related to the world that our consciouness reconstructs. In this relationship, there is a form of infinite explorations of ‘the landscape as a states of mind**‘. – DENIS PERNET

➝ A Walk In The Park is currently on view at Kunsthaus Glarus and is running through May 5, 2013 -

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*Apart from numerous designs for public and private gardens and squares, such as the promenade in Copacabana or several public gardens in Brasilia and Sao Paulo BURLE MARX also designed six patios for the UNESCO building and sketched the terraces of the Centre Pompidou in Paris (not realized). He is seen as the founder of modern garden architecture, and worked often with the architects LUCIO COSTA, LE CORBUSIER and OSCAR NIEMEYER. His gardens are characterised by curved organic forms, creating the overall impression of an abstract painting. In Brazil, BURLE MARX used native plants. A total of 33 species were named after him. He cultivated the tropical plants that he collected on his expeditions and then used them for his gardens. The use of native plants was an innovation in Brazil at the time – until then Brazilian gardens had followed the European model, and European plants were used, gestures of cultural colonialism, but also exotic symbols in the tropical context.

**‘every landscape is a state of mind’- HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL, Fragments d’un journal intime (Paris: 1884)

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One Cubic Foot of California (2011) by ROBERT KINMONT
soil, Douglas pine wood, plywood, shovel, broom, drawing pencil

seen on the occasion of his solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland
on Saturday, February 16, 2013
image © wfw

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view from the installation Full Participation (2012) by New Zealand-born SIMON DENNY for the group exhibition entitled SIMULCAST*
at Kunsthalle Palazzo in Liestal, Switzerland
seen on Friday, February 15, 2013
image © wfw

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*SIMULCAST features also the work of RICO SCAGLIOLA / MICHAEL MEIER along with STAN DOUGLAS and is running through March 10, 2013

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Globe, dye-sublimation print on polyester, 130cm x 195cm, 2013

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installation view at Future Gallery, Berlin, January – March 2013

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Bananaz, print on vertical blinds, 326cm x 242cm, 2013

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The Comfort Zone, HD video, 04:19, 2013

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Mia and Sunset, framed archival pigment prints on paper, 59.4cm x 42cm, 2013 

all images courtesy of OVAL OFFICE and Future Gallery, Berlin

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 (pronounced OVAL OFFICE) is a project by MIKKO GAESTEL and JAAKKO PALLASVUO, both individual artists in their own right. For their debut solo exhibition at Future Gallery in Berlin, they are showing an experimental approach, with works structured loosely around everyday rituals or cast from the curious ephemera collected from personal experiences. The whole is presented in the form of video and photography, equally pervaded by surreality, eeriness and absurdity.

Their work reminds me of what PAUL VIRILIO calls ‘Picnolepsy‘, a medical condition that, nonetheless, tells us about perception and time:

Suddenly, before me, new objects appeared, bizarre figures cut out, notched, a set of articulations has become suddenly visible and these observed objects were no longer banal, whatever, insignificant; they were on the contrary, diversified in the extreme. They were everywhere, all space, all the world was filled with new forms. They were nested in the hollows of the least forms. It was like an unknown vegetation that grew around me. Industrial objects without value provoked the appearance of objects temporarily given a great complexity. The position of things triggered new exotic forms, forms that escaped us despite their evidence. Accustomed as we are to trivial geometries, we perceive perfectly the circle, the sphere, the cube or the square, we perceive infinitely less well intervals, the interstices between things, between people. - PAUL VIRILIO, L’Horizon Négatif

Good news: OVAL OFFICE   is currently on view at Future Gallery in Berlin until March 2, 2013

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Homonynes II (green), 2012
coloured plaster

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Homonynes II (violet), 2012
Homonynes II (green), 2012
Homonynes II (brown), 2012
coloured plaster

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Homonymes II (brown splash), 2012
coloured plaster, private collection, London

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Homonymes II (yellow splash), 2012
coloured plaster

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Portrait I, 2012
installation view, Frac Aquitaine Bordeaux, 2012
photo: JEAN-CHRISTOPHER GARCIA

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Homonymes, 2010 (detail)

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Homonymes, 2010 (detail)

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Homonymes II,III & IV, 2010
plaster, installation view at Balice Hertling, March-May 2010

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installation view from Un’Espressione Geografica
at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino 2011
plaster, acrylic paint on paper

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installation view at Espace d’art 1m3, February-March 2011
image courtesy of 1m3, Lausanne

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work for the group show the exhibition le vertige de la moraine, strate III
at Espace d’art 1m3, Lausanne, July 2011
image courtesy of 1m3, Lausanne

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God Box N°1, 2 & 3, 2013
installation view at Kunsthalle Bern, February 2013
image: wfw

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God Box N°2, 2013 (detail)
installation view at Kunsthalle Bern, February 2013
image: wfw

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Ornaments N°1, 2 & 3, 2012-2013
mirror, wire
installation view at Kunsthalle Bern, February 2013
image: wfw

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Reproductions N°2, 3 & 4, 2010
wall painting, spray
installation view at Kunsthalle Bern, February 2013
image: wfw

all works courtesy ISABELLE CORNARO, Balice Hertling Paris & Francesca Pia Zürich (unless stated otherwise)

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Six questions by FABRICE STROUN to French artist ISABELLE CORNARO on the occasion of her new solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern:

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FABRICE STROUN: At Kunsthalle Bern, you will exhibit two sets of cast works, one horizontal the other vertical, which are collectively titled ‘Homonymes’. Most of the objects you are using to make these casts seem to come from a defunct era; old-fashioned tchotchkes found in someone’s attic or at the flea market.

ISABELLE CORNARO: They do indeed come from flea markets, which I visit without any pleasure. I dislike the slightly pornographic relationship to objects, half-sentimental, half-lecherous, that these kinds of places generate. The objects I select are domestic, decorative baubles (vases with ‘Oriental’ motifs, cheap glassware, Christmas decorations, etc.), outdated tools (rubber stamps, metronomes, old camera lenses, etc.), my own worn-out working tools (small varnished plinths, bits of bubble wrap, plaster, glass sheets, slides, etc.) as well as objects linked to money (coins, bills, poker chips, piggy banks, etc.) or to pageantry (perfume bottles, jewels, medals, lipsticks, etc.). There are rarely any direct human representations, only abstract, vegetable, animal and mineral motifs. All these objects are the product of semi-industrial labor (since none or very few of them are actually hand-made) and they articulate the values of a social class– which happens to be, most of the time, my own.

FS: Is this a way of bringing to the fore an autobiographical dimension in your work?

IC: No, not in this sense. It’s just that, having grown up with them, these objects are familiar. I know them intimately. The very first objects I ever used to make art are jewels that belonged to my mother. Not only did I have them at my fingertips, but I had also seen them in old photographs that date to a time when my parents were living in a former French colony. The jewels were made with local gold and diamonds, the very natural resources that got the French there in the first place. Today, the majority of the objects I work with would be copies of copies of precisely such jewels: surrogates.

FS: The use of this ideologically charged, depleted decorative aesthetic demarcates a semantic field that is very much your own. Your work seems relatively impervious to avant-garde citations or to the globalised pop culture so many of your contemporaries draw on.

IC: I find it difficult to work with pop culture because, in my opinion, it is already overflowing with meaning. Most importantly, pop tends to generate a positive, sentimental relationship to culture that I find unproductive. I prefer working with objects that make me ill at ease. This unsympathetic relationship to my source material creates a tension that I much prefer.

FS: Do you consider these casts as ‘models’ of something, or some process, or should we regard them more as ‘allegories’? And if so, allegories of what?

IC: I like the trope of an allegory since it describes an abstract relationship to the world and often calls for the use of figures. The cast object relates to two distinct fields of likeness: to the real objects that were used to make the casts, and to the abstract categories they represent.

FS: Are you talking about aesthetic categories of representation or art-historical ones, which relate more to technique?

IC: The categories I refer to are empirically defined, most often while observing different objects lying around my studio at a given time. For the horizontal Homonymes, for example, I identified three distinct families of objects: naturalistic objects (even when streamlined), ‘in the shape of’ a duck, a flower; etc., objects carved with decorative motifs, repeated and stylized, and objects sporting geometrical form– even if impure– that brought to mind a notion of abstraction. In other words, my categories were Naturalism, Stylization and Abstraction. A fourth cast was then made with all the ‘leftovers’.

FS: Once you have defined an ensemble of objects, what formal or processual principle presides over their assembly?

IC: It really depends on the series I am working on. As far as the ‘Homonymes’ are concerned, they are not so much composed as simply piled up. The absence of composition allows me to put aside my subjectivity, or at least my ‘sensibility’. This allows me to move from formal (or stylistic) to more categorical considerations. Here, the piles were thought of as ‘heaps’, following a functional rather than an aesthetic logic. By that I mean that spacing had to be sufficient for the technician to make the casts, with various heights so as to reveal the maximum detail, etc. One thing that really matters to me is that the cast is molded in a single take. It is a solidifying, a change of material state– meaning that all the objects used become a single mass; ‘drawn’ shapes, emerging from a formless block of matter. An important point of reference for me are 16th-century Mannerist grottos, where animals and flowers are sculpted in a mass that remains partly formless, or, rather, keeps its initial natural shapes. There are also other grottos where the entire stone is sculpted, including the parts that are supposed to be formless; ‘natural’ matter. The material and the manner in which it is used projects an image of reification, i.e. of death – the passage from a living, animated body to that of an object, that is to say, of a corpse.

➝ ISABELLE CORNARO‘s first monographic exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern is running through March 24, 2013.

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all images:
installation views and works from Haus der Braut at VI, VII, Oslo
courtesy of VI, VII, Oslo

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I’m gnawing the pencil, rearranging the desk, perspiring, perspiring, and at some point I realise I need to be more relaxed, permeable even; things are very close at hand; fey little office doodles, shop fronts, stickers I collected as child. In flow of my work, they’re extracted ready-mades. There is another aspect, it involves specialist processes and manufacturing techniques, searching these out is like making a kind of pilgrimage. You end up on the periphery of cities, in the bleaker of industrial estates, the companies around are called Velopex and Proformer and they don’t care a bit about you. -ELOISE HAWSER for ( n d ks )

Born in 1985 in London, ELOISE HAWSER received a BFA from Oxford University just before moving to Frankfurt where she studied at the Städelschule in TOBIAS REHBERGER‘s class.

Her sculptural practice is deeply concerned with the way things are made, and draws on a wide range of references, materials and processes that make up our industrial environment. For her current exhibition at VI, VII, Oslo entitled Haus der Braut (House of Brides), the works have evolved from a larger piece of sculpture, a detached roller door, pulled straight out of the high street: I had a kind of fantasy to turn it into a crude metallic sea, the interlocking slats are wave- like and rhythmic. Then there is a rosette helix pattern that she has extracted from the profile of roller door slats and that is rearticulated in several works, including silkscreen prints and a textile created on an industrial loom.

Intrigue to learn how roller doors are constructed reveal that each unit is composed of interlocking slats with scroll-like details that appear to be crafted and articulated by hand in an otherwise industrial process of production, lending them personal character that complicates their universality, and evokes physical and cultural intimacies between maker and object.

(…) The relations suggested by roller doors, between industrial forms with handmade touches, and an economy form of protection are at the crux of several new works by HAWSER that consider skins, industrial seduction and display, as well as legal and domestic terms of intimacy, physical constitutions, and the antiquated term ‘husband, ’ in relation to sculpture.

➝ Haus der Braut by ELOISE HAWSER is running through March 1, 2013 at VI, VII, Oslo

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from the series Absence…, 40×50 cm, 2013

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from the series Absence…, 40×50 cm, 2013

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from the series Absence…, 40×50 cm, 2013

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Transfert, 40 x 50 cm, 2012

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from the series Oh Danger Divin, 40×50 cm, 2012

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from the series Oh Danger Divin, 40×50 cm, 2012

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Blogueuse de mode, 50×40 cm, 2012

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Zone Balnéaire, 50×40 cm, 2012

all drawings © ROXANE LUMERET

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Get lost in ROXANE LUMERET‘s beautifully illustrated microcosms filled with rich colors, brilliant patterns, and a touch of slightly twisted sense of humour. Incredibly captivating, her drawings are vast and complex detailing everything from the apocalypse to the mundanities of everyday life.

ROXANE LUMERET studied Illustration at Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg. Her illustrations have been featured in the likes of Nyctalope Magazine, Article 11 and Tandem Publications. Additionally she founded an independent publishing house called Faucon Verger in 2011 and is part of the collective Dessins des Fesses. She has exhibited her work for the first time at Salon de Montrouge in 2012.

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, solo exhibition by CHRISTOPHER FÜLLEMANN
at  Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
from 26 January – 3 March 2013
poster by EMMANUEL CRIVELLI & CEDRIC RACCIO

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Forms and Lovers is CHRISTOPHER FÜLLEMANN‘s first solo exhibition at Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne. The Swiss artist, now based in California, transformed the first three rooms of the museum by installing both sensational and grotesque sculptures made of materials such as wax, Sagex, latex, foam and other synthetic materials.

Assimilating forms from the everyday such as seats, handles, and hooks, his works eschew minimalist reserve in favor of bold colors, sensual lines, and lyrical references to the human body. Additionally he likes to exploit the performative elements of sculpture: in the current exhibition, CHRISTOPHER FÜLLEMANN activates, through a brilliantly orchestrated spatial arrangement of his works, performative and self-reflective modes of perception in the viewers. His forms also appear to always be on the verge of being transformed into something else to further change their appearance.

The anthropomorphic appearance of my works, as much by their form as by their dimension, results from a desire to see these three-dimensional collages like performers. I hope that my sculptures produce a feeling of energy that can transcend their visual perception. - CHRISTOPHER FÜLLEMANN

Good news: Forms and Lovers, is currently on view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne until 3 March 2013

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Curator ASIAH PAYNE
into the solo exhibition of THOMAS KOENIG at Skopia, Geneva*
on Thursday, 31 January, 2013
image © wfw

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* the exhibition is running through February 16, 2013

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Mixed Ceramics n° 11 (2012, porcelain, stoneware, earthenware) by DANIEL DEWAR and GREGORY GICQUEL
as viewed at Graff Mourgue d’Algue, Geneva*
on Thursday, 31 January, 2013
image © wfw

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*on view until February 14, 2013

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The Family (2007) by Swiss artist MAI-THU PERRET
at the booth FMAC & FCAC (Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville et du Canton de Genève) at the second edition of Art Genève
seen on Thursday, 31 January, 2013
image © wfw

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Une Mission Ephémère (One Ephemeral Mission), 1993
9 minutes, 35 mm color, music by BERNARD PARMEGIANI
co- Production : aaa  - La Sept/Arte – CNC

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Une Mission Ephémère is a 1993 animation directed by Polish animator PIOTR KAMLER with music composed by BERNARD PARMEGIANI. This was PIOTR KAMLER‘s final work from nine other short animations which combined techniques of animation, stop-motion, and early CGI and created during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1990s. The film won Best Animation at major animation festivals including Marly Le Roy in 1994, Annecy 1993, Banff (Canada) 1993 and Zagreb in 1994.

PIOTR KAMLER was born in Warsaw in 1936. He is a graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art. In 1959 he went to Paris to continue his art studies. It was there that he came into contact with Research Department at ORTF (directed by PIERRE SCHAEFFER) and began to collaborate with “concrete” musicians such as IANNIS XENAKIS on experimental shorts (musical abstract films and “fables”). The ORTF Research Department which was later taken over by INA, was a hothouse for talent, enabling diverse artists to carry out a large number of bold and innovative personal projects.

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found via 

Dramaticule, 2013
clay sand, photographic paper backdrops, fragments of clay pots
installation at T293, Rome, January 23 – March 2, 2013, photo: ROBERTO APA

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I mentioned SONIA KACEM before, but I’m bound to be mentioning her again since I like her work so much, so I am really excited that a new solo exhibition opened in Rome last week, in the new outpost of T293 gallery.

On the occasion of her first solo show at T293 the Swiss-Tunisian artist SONIA KACEM presents a site-specific installation in several volumes, evoking the fundamental issues related to sculpture and more specifically those of the dematerialization and the decomposition of classical forms.

Composed of clay sand, photographic paper backdrops and fragments of clay pots, the installation spreads along the lines to the vanishing point of the long corridor of the gallery. The mounds of dirt break up upon the flows of air and the passage of the audience, resembling a deserted plain; the “baroque” drape sags as gravity exerts its force; some sculptures made of photographic paper wither in a darkening process.

➝ Dramaticule is running through March 2, 2013.

Palm Trees, Corpus Christi #1, 2011

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Palm Trees, Corpus Christi #2, 2011

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Footnotes: Frontier (2009), 2011

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The Park: Dog (2010), 2012

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Footnotes: Kate (2011), 2011

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Footnotes: Unknown, Jackson (2009), 2011

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The Park: Palm Trees Accident #1, 2012

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The Park: Speak Your Truth, 2010

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Palm Trees, Corpus Christi #3, 2011

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Bag, 2010

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The Park: Footnotes, 2012
pick up, Austin, 2009

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Foonotes: Josh (2009), 2011

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The Park: Palm Trees Accident #3, 2012

all images © SYLVAIN COUZINET-JACQUES

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Last weekend I came across the work of SYLVAIN COUZINET-JACQUES during the portfolio viewing entitled Plat(t)form which takes place every year during three days at Fotomuseum in Winterthur.

SYLVAIN COUZINET-JACQUES is a french photographer who questions digital photography and photographic representation since 2010. His research focuses on the perception, atmosphere, texture, suggestion and (re)-construction of an image. The result is almost all in gradations of black and white, and the subject matter often consists of ambiguous recordings of city views, urban landscapes, spaces, objects and bodies.

The photographs have a snapshot-like, ephemeral quality, while each image builds a very subjective vision of reality in which objects, matter and representation are melted. Furthermore his use of extreme lightening and darkening makes for an atmosphere of uncertainty and indeterminacy, sometimes even evolving into the realm of complete abstraction.

Good news: his work is currently on view at Galerie Mad in Marseille until 2 February, 2013. Additionally he will be part of the Salon de Montrouge from 16 May to 12 June, 2013.

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videos from the fantastic immersive video installation entitled Double Extension Beauty Tubes (2008-2010) by RICO SCAGLIOLA & MICHAEL MEIER
as part of the exhibition Young People, Set 9 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur*
seen on Saturday January 26 at Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Scagliola/Meier

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* this exhibition is running through February 10, 2013

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detail from MANDLA REUTER‘s solo exhibition* at Kunsthalle Basel,
explored on Tuesday, January 22, 2013
image © wfw

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* the exhibition is running through March 10, 2013

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Formage de Tête, 2011
aluminium, silicon, stainless steel, lacquer, cast iron
installation view at Venice Biennale, 2011

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Formage de tête (Capot seul), 2011
aluminium, silicon, stainless steel, lacquer, cast iron

Waste Basket (bin for rejected ideas), 2009
wire mesh and rubber
115.01 cm x 59.99 cm x 62.99 cm

Formage de tête, installation view, Galerie Daniel Buchholz 2011

NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN by GIOVANNI HÄNNINEN, 2011

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Fluffing the Pillows A (Mooring, Gurneys, Silos), 2012
casted painted aluminium, fabric, rubber, pleather, hemp rope, chromed pole
dimensions installed variable
installation view at Galerie Buchholz Köln, 2012

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Fluffing the Pillows A (Mooring, Gurneys, Silos), 2012
installation view at Galerie Buchholz Köln, 2012

Advertising Format, 2009
blown glass, silicon, gallery light fitting and label

Pubic Region, 2009
mixed media installation
courtesy of the artist and Studio Voltaire, London
photo: ANDY KEATE

Class Reunion, 2008
installation view Contemporary Art Gallery
photo: SCOTT MASSEY

Class Reunion, 2008
Heins Schürmann Collection, Herzogenrath
photograph: RAPHAEL HEFTI

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Butcher, Barber, Angler & others 2009 (detail)
mixed media installation
Courtesy of the artist and Studio Voltaire, London
© 2010 Nairy Baghramian, photograph: ANDY KEATE

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Installation views from RETAINER, 2013
on view at SculptureCenter, New York
photos: JASON MANDELLA

all images courtesy the artist

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The SculptureCenter in New York just opened a few days ago the first exhibition in a major public institution in the US by NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN. An excuse to discover the work of the Berlin-based artist known for her sculptural installations and photographs.

NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN employs interior design, literature, and art-historical debates around minimalism to comment on materiality, manufacture, and display. Her work examines political and social systems of power, encompassing questions of context, institutional framing, and the production and reception of contemporary art. For her, exhibition spaces are conceptual structures as much as they are habitable buildings. Their historically determined design and layout become both reference and structure of the work.

She was born in Isfahan, Iran in 1971, and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1985. Baghramian’s recent exhibitions include a solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a two-person show with PHYLLIDA BARLOW at Serpentine Gallery in London, and solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Kunstverein Aachen, and Kunstverein Nürnberg. Her work has been featured in several major international exhibitions including Sculpture Project Münster (2007), the Berlin Biennial (2008), Illuminations at the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2011) and Temporary Stedelijk 2, Stedelijk Museum(2011). BAGHRAMIAN was awarded the 2012 Hector Kunstpreis, which included an artist publication and an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim.

And good news: the exhibition RETAINER (images above) by NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN is running through March 25, 2013 at SculptureCenter in New York.

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