Futurology at BELETAGE marks Murnau Den Linden’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland. The exhibition offers a modern interpretation of the ancient concept of "written in stone," using plastics to symbolize permanence due to their durable nature. It challenges the conventional view of plastics by using them to create lasting narratives and immersive experiences. Plastics are presented not as disposable items, but as materials capable of preserving important themes, memories, and insights.

"I have often wondered why someone like me, who is concerned about the use of plastics, works with them almost obsessively. Honestly, I find it surprising. However, after reviewing my recent notes and photographs, I found the answer in Zurich’s botanical garden and its large greenhouses. I’m interested in using plastic as a durable material to convey important and timeless messages. It is a material that encapsulates micro-environments, creates parallel worlds, and opens doors to alternate realities. When you enter a greenhouse or pass through a PVC curtain in a hospital or cold storage room, it feels like stepping into a new world with its own rules and realities, distinct from what happens outside. It’s this concept of a time tunnel or peeking through a keyhole to glimpse what lies beyond."
– Murnau Den Linden

Knowledge is Power The exhibition showcases plastics in various forms to create an interactive and evocative experience. This engagement with art fosters a kind of knowledge that empowers viewers to seek answers to future challenges. It helps develop skills to navigate uncertainty and either avoid or confront crises. The use of plastics reflects a modern approach to ensuring that significant ideas endure over time. By integrating light with PVC and acrylic glass, the exhibition invites viewers to explore alternate realities and critical information, blending art and science to delve into the human fascination with time, memory, and the quest for immortality.

Hanging PVC strips from the ceiling—symbolizing gateways to parallel worlds of knowledge, time travel and the control of milestone events—or placing them on a clothing rack as a representation of a timeline, provides a symbolic approach to these themes. In contrast, small acrylic blocks containing evocative images serve as visual sculptures, allowing inspiration through interpretation. The exhibition invites exploration of new dimensions and realities through these artistic installations, as well as others that reinforce the narrative.

"In a competition with Parrhasius, Zeuxis painted grapes that were so lifelike that birds flew in to peck at them. Parrhasius then presented his rival with a painting depicting a linen curtain. When Zeuxis impatiently asked him to finally push it aside so that he could look at the painting that was supposedly behind it, Parrhasius was certain of victory
as he had managed to deceive Zeuxis. For the curtain was painted“
(Pliny the Elder, Nat. Hist. XXXV, 64)

Naomi Tereza Salmon repeatedly returns to trompe-l'œil in her video and photographic works. The term translates from French as "deceive the eye". Her latest works also playfully explore the boundary between image and reality. They challenge the viewers senses and expectations and invite them to reflect on their relationship to reality.

While in the Baroque period, the heyday of illusionist painting, seemingly real structural ceiling extensions in sacred buildings suggested a direct connection to the kingdom of heaven and thus supported the pictorial program of the Counter-Reformation with great persuasive power, photography, on the other hand, was later ascribed the lifelike depictive power of the here and now. It can be understood as a witness of a concrete moment. But in Salmon's work, the aspect of the past moment plays no role - it is either endlessly present through a loop or timeless in the choice of motif. In Tapetenwechsel (2024), a piece of mundane wallpaper is translated into the medium of photography and elevated by the change of context, viewed in isolation and transferred once again into the supposed third dimension in its new, doubled object-hood. In the work Lisone and in its mirrored version enosiL (both 2022), the no longer visible returns to the image section through the mirror theme. The unseen, the absent, thus becomes the main protagonist.

Interestingly, the psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) noted in a seminar in 1964 that the myth of the two painters mentioned at the beginning reveals an aspect of human perception. While animals are drawn to superficial appearances, humans are attracted by the idea of things that are hidden. Thinking further, this results in the search or desire for a supposedly hidden meaning. But the artist also plays with this expectation when she has the dredger driver on Herzliya beach endlessly driving sand into the Mediterranean, only for it to be washed back grain by grain in the next moment. We give in to the illusion that human action is always purposeful.

Meanwhile, the art of illusion has lost none of its relevance. Confronted with virtual reality, fake news, photos embellished by filters in social media, trompe-l'œil has long been part of everyday life beyond the world of art. The apparent deceptions call for us to take a closer look. What is real? And what is an illusion of perception?

—

"Zeuxis malte im Wettstreit mit Parrhasius so naturgetreue Trauben, dass Vögel herbeiflogen, um an ihnen zu picken. Daraufhin stellte Parrhasius seinem Rivalen ein Gemälde vor, auf dem ein leinener Vorhang zu sehen war. Als Zeuxis ungeduldig bat, diesen doch endlich beiseite zu schieben, um das sich vermeintlich dahinter befindliche Bild zu betrachten, hatte Parrhasius den Sieg sicher, da er es geschafft hatte, Zeuxis zu täuschen. Der Vorhang war nämlich gemalt." (Plinius der Ältere, Nat. Hist. XXXV, 64)

Naomi Tereza Salmon kehrt in ihren Video- und Fotoarbeiten inhaltlich immer wieder zum Trompe l’oeil zurück. Der Begriff lautet aus dem Französischen übersetzt „täusche das Auge“. So tasten auch ihre neuesten Werke spielerisch die Grenze zwischen Bild und Wirklichkeit ab. Sie fordern die Sinne und Erwartungen des Betrachters heraus und laden dazu ein, über das Verhältnis zur Realität nachzudenken.

Während im Barock, zur Blütezeit der illusionistischen Malerei, scheinbar reale bauliche Deckenerweiterungen in sakralen Gebäuden eine direkte Verbindung zum Himmelreich vorschlagen und so das Bildprogramm der Gegenreformation mit grosser Überzeugungskraft stützen, wird hingegen später der Fotografie die naturgetreue Abbildungskraft des Diesseits zugeschrieben. Sie kann als Zeugin eines konkreten Augenblicks verstanden werden. Doch bei Salmon spielt der Aspekt des vergangenen Moments keine Rolle - er wird entweder durch einen Loop endlos präsent oder in der Wahl des Motivs zeitlos. Im Tapetenwechsel (2024) wird ein Stück profaner Tapete in das Medium der Fotografie übersetzt und durch den Kontextwechsel überhöht, isoliert betrachtet und in seiner neuen, verdoppelten Objekthaftigkeit erneut in die vermeintliche dritte Dimension überführt. In dem Werk lisone und in seiner gespiegelten Fassung ǝuosil (beide 2022) kehrt das nicht mehr Sichtbare durch das Spiegelthema in den Bildauschnitt zurück. Das Nichtgesehene, Abwesende wird so zum Hauptakteur.

Interessanterweise hält 1964 der Psychoanalytiker und Theoretiker Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) in einem Seminar fest, dass der Mythos der beiden eingangs erwähnten Maler einen Aspekt der menschlichen Wahrnehmung enthüllt. Während Tiere zu oberflächlichen Erscheinungen hingezogen werden, wird der Mensch durch die Vorstellung von Dingen, die verborgen sind, angelockt. Daraus resultiert weitergedacht die Suche oder der Wunsch nach einem vermeintlich verborgenen Sinn. Doch auch mit dieser Erwartung spielt die Künstlerin, wenn sie den Baggerfahrer am Strand von Herzlia endlos Sand in das Mittelmeer fahren lässt, nur damit dieser im nächsten Moment Korn für Korn zurückgespült wird. Wir geben uns der Illusion hin, dass das menschliche Handeln stets zielgerichtet ist.

Die Kunst der Illusion hat derweil nichts an Aktualität verloren. Konfrontiert mit virtueller Realität, vorgetäuschten Nachrichten, durch Filter geschönte Fotos in sozialen Medien gehört das Trompe l’oeil über die Welt der Kunst hinaus längst zum Alltag. Die augenscheinlichen Irreführungen fordern dazu auf genau hinzusehen. Was ist real? Und was ist eine Wahrnehmungstäuschung?

Rede von Antonella Barone anlässlich der Ausstellungseröffnung von Hanga Séra, Your breath is my home, am 15. September 2023


Sehr geehrtes Publikum

Auch meinerseits möchte ich euch herzlich willkommen heissen. Ihr fragt euch vielleicht, warum ausgerechnet ich heute hier vorne stehe und euch etwas zur Ausstellung erzähle. Doch als Hanga Séra mich anfragte, ob ich ihre Einzelausstellung hier im Beletage Art Space mit einer Ansprache eröffnen möchte, konnte ich nicht anders, als ihre Einladung dankend annehmen. Denn in gewisser Hinsicht empfinde ich mich selbst – auch wenn nur im bescheidenen Masse – als Element ihrer Arbeit.

Die Ausstellung – und ihre neuste Serie, die in diesem Rahmen präsentiert wird – trägt den Titel «Your breath is my home» und Hanga und ich begegneten uns zum ersten Mal im Jahr 2021 an jenem Ort, den ich für mich als «My Home» definiere: Balzers.

Unsere Pfade kreuzten sich erstmals, als Hanga im Kunstatelier im denkmalgeschützten Turmhaus in Balzers war. Dort hatte ich die Gelegenheit, sie zum ersten Mal zu besuchen und dort entstand ein weiteres Werk, das nun hier im Beletage Art Space präsentiert wird: «Balzers Diary». Diese Balzner Tagebücher, die sie für uns öffnet, offenbaren etwas Persönliches, das jedoch nicht von Anfang an persönlich war, sondern durch Verarbeitung und Verinnerlichung zu etwas Eigenem wurde.

Diese Eigenschaft, die sich in vielen ihrer Werke widerspiegelt, fungiert als ein verbindendes Element zwischen Hanga und mir als Balznerin. Es ist eine Art Liebesbeziehung zu einem Ort, der für mich und alle Balzner*innen als «Zuhause» definiert wird. Ein Ort, den Hanga in ihre Arbeit integrierte und mit dem sie eine innige Beziehung aufgebaute. Dieses «Zuhause» erstreckt sich nicht nur auf die historischen, denkmalgeschützten Mauern des mittelalterlichen Turmhauses, in dem die Künstlerin ihre Artist-in-Residency absolvierte. Es umfasst auch das abgeschiedene Dorf mit weniger als 5’000 Einwohner*innen, das wie ein Relikt aus vergangenen Zeiten wirken mag, wo man den Eindruck haben könnte, in einem mittelalterlichen Turm von der restlichen Gesellschaft isoliert zu sein. Doch gerade in der Isolation, erkannte Hanga die Bedeutung lokaler Verbindungen, zwischenmenschlicher Netzwerke und eines Gefühls der Zugehörigkeit. Trotz der räumlichen Entfernung von ihrem eigentlichen Zuhause fand sie in Balzers ein neues «Daham», wie man dort sagt.

Die Sprache – und insbesondere die Eigenheiten der lokalen gesprochenen Mundart – nehmen eine entscheidende Rolle in Hanga Séras Werk ein. Während ihres Aufenthalts in Balzers konnte sie diese Sprache und ihre Besonderheiten nicht in Büchern erforschen, sondern vielmehr in den Strassennamen der Gemeinde entdecken. Eine Strasse, an der einst ein Garten mit Apfelbäumen zu finden war, existiert heute nur noch als Schild mit dem weissen Wort «Böngerta» auf blauem Hintergrund. Dies verdeutlicht eindrucksvoll, wie Sprache die Erinnerung an vergangene Orte und Geschichten bewahren kann. Doch kaum jemand denkt darüber nach, wo dieser Apfelbaumgarten heute noch existiert. Alles, was davon übrig bleibt, ist der Name auf dem Strassenschild in einer Sprache, die heutzutage von niemandem mehr gesprochen wird.

Im Herzen ihres Balzner Tagebuchs finden sich Worte, eine Ansammlung von Gedanken und Zitaten von Hannah Arendt, kunstvoll zu einer Collage unterschiedlicher Elemente komponiert. Diese drei primären Elemente sind erstens Haare, gesammelt von Einheimischen. Das zweite Element sind hauchdünne Holzbahnen – ein Abfallprodukt der Möbelherstellung, das sie in zwei Koffern aus Graubünden mitgebracht hatte. Das dritte Element ist der Austausch mit den einheimischen Bewohner*innen.

Das gesprochene Wort, das seit dem Mittelalter – oder wenn nicht gar länger – durch die Strassen von Balzers wandert und von Mund zu Mund weitergegeben wird, findet in ihrer Arbeit eine lebendige Fortsetzung. Hanga Séra bewahrt diese Worte sorgsam auf, verewigt sie in den Holzbahnen und in den Einträgen ihres Balzner Tagebuchs, um die Erinnerungen an den Apfelbaumgarten zu bewahren, selbst wenn dieser längst gefällt wurde.

Die Tagebucheinträge entfalten sich zu kunstvollen Kompositionen. Die Haare fugieren einerseits als partizipatives Element, gestiftet von den Einheimischen, anderseits als Bindeglied zu ihrer früheren Arbeit «Corona Diary». Die Holzbahnen knüpfen ihrerseits eine Verbindung zum jüngsten Werk «Zurich Diary» aus dem Jahr 2023.

Your breath is my home. Dieser Satz findet sich in keinem Buch. Er wurde von Hanga niedergeschrieben. Er wurde von Hanga erschaffen und wird jedes Mal aufs Neue erschaffen, wenn er ausgesprochen wird, um die unverfälschte Wahrheit zu verkörpern und keinerlei Raum für Banalitäten zu lassen. Die Wahrheit, die in diesem Satz liegt, ist so tiefgründig, dass sie niemals einer Lüge weichen sollte. Um sicherzustellen, dass dieser Satz in diesem geschützten Rahmen der unbestrittenen Wahrheit entspricht, wählte sie die linke Hand zum Malen ihrer Kompositionen. Diese Hand gilt als die «unbefleckte» Hand, die reine Hand, die niemals eine Lüge niedergeschrieben hat. So rein, dass sie es vielleicht nicht einmal kann oder noch nie gelernt hat.

Der Ansatz, diese tiefgründigen Einsichten in ihrer vollen Intensität zu erfassen und zu verinnerlichen, könnte einer der Hauptgründe sein, der Hanga dazu inspiriert, persönliche und intime Reihen zu erschaffen. Hanga Séra bewegt sich durch diese bildliche Kompositionen und drückt ihren kreativen Prozess auf folgende Weise aus: «Ich trage die Farbe genau dort auf, wo das Bild das zu benötigen scheint.». Doch ihre Worte tragen eine tiefere Bedeutung in sich, die auf dem ersten Blick vielleicht unbeachtet bleibt. Somit distanziert sie sich von der blossen Sachlichkeit einer Landkarte.

Ihre Kunst zeichnet sich stets durch die subtile Transformation des Vorhandenen aus. Indem sie das Vertraute verinnerlicht und ihm eine neue Identität verleiht, verwandelt sie das Alte in etwas Neues, das Bekannte in das Unbekannte. Ihre Arbeit zeigt, dass sie die Landkarte nicht einfach als nüchternes Abbild von Meeren, Strassen, Städten und Ländern betrachtet, sondern als eine abstrakte Bildkomposition, die noch unvollkommen ist. Ihre künstlerische Intervention vervollständigt das Bild und verleiht ihm etwas Harmonisches und dennoch so persönlich, was in seiner ursprünglichen Form nicht vorhanden war.

Ihre Arbeit ist geprägt von der Idee des Sammelns und der Neuerfindung. Jeder gesammelte Gegenstand bringt seine eigene, oft verborgene Geschichte in sich, die Hanga behutsam neu interpretiert. Auf diese Weise wird die alte Geschichte zu einem integralen Bestandteil ihrer eigenen künstlerischen Biographie. Diese Gegenstände, die in ihrer ursprünglichen Verwendung keine Bedeutung mehr haben, finden in Hangas Kunst ein neues Leben und eine neue Bestimmung.

Die Alltagsgegenstände, die niemand mehr benötigt und die Hanga Séra in ihre Kunst integriert, werden zu Poesie. Dieser Übergang von Alltäglichem zum Poetischen spiegelt sich nicht nur in den Ready-Made-Objekten wider, sondern auch in der beinahe kindlichen Naivität, mit der sie die Welt betrachtet und ständig neu entdeckt. Sie zeigt uns, dass sich die schlichte Schönheit der Poesie sich selbst auch in einem Geographiebuch offenbaren kann und zwar in Sätzen wie «Continents move as fast as fingernails grow». Solche Sätze lassen das Leben so zart und anrührend erschienen, wie etwas, das wir behutsam an unsere Brust drücken.

«Your breath is my home» ist somit mehr als nur eine Ausstellung. Sie ist eine Liebeserklärung. Eine verliebte Serie, die auf einzigartige und persönliche Weise die Vielschichtigkeit, die Fragilität und den unermüdlichen Kampf, die mit dem Leben einhergehen, einfängt und präsentiert.

Abschliessend lade ich euch alle herzlich dazu ein, die Schönheit und die ausserordentlich komplexe, doch gleichzeitig tiefgründig einfache Welt dieser Ausstellung zu erkunden. Lasst euch von ihrer Faszination mitreissen und nehmt euch Zeit, die Werke zu betrachten und in ihre Tiefe einzutauchen. Ich wünsche jeder und jedem von euch, in dieser Ausstellung etwas von eurem ganz persönlichen «Daham» zu finden, sei es auch nur in einem einzigen Wort.

Danke.

——

Dear audience

For my part, I would also like to welcome you. You may wonder why I of all people am standing here today to tell you something about the exhibition. But when Hanga Séra asked me if I would like to open her solo exhibition here at Beletage Art Space with a speech, I couldn't help but gratefully accept her invitation. Because in a way, I feel myself - even if only modestly - to be an element of her work.

The exhibition - and her latest series presented in this context - is entitled "Your breath is my home" and Hanga and I met for the first time in 2021 in the place I define for myself as "My Home": Balzers.

Our paths crossed for the first time when Hanga was in the art studio in the listed tower house in Balzers. It was there that I had the opportunity to visit her for the first time, and it was there that another work was created that is now presented here in the Beletage Art Space: "Balzers Diary". These Balzers Diaries, which she opens for us, reveal something personal, which, however, was not personal from the beginning, but became something of her own through processing and internalisation.
This quality, which is reflected in many of her works, acts as a connecting element between Hanga and me as a Balzner. It is a kind of love affair with a place that is defined as "home" for me and all Balzner*s. A place that Hanga integrated into her work and with which she built an intimate relationship. This "home" extends not only to the historic, listed walls of the medieval tower house where the artist completed her artist-in-residency. It also includes the secluded village of less than 5,000 inhabitants, which may seem like a relic of times past, where one could have the impression of being isolated from the rest of society in a medieval tower. But it was in isolation that Hanga realised the importance of local connections, interpersonal networks and a sense of belonging. Despite the physical distance from her actual home, she found a new "Daham" in Balzers, as they say there.

Language - and in particular the peculiarities of the local spoken dialect - occupy a crucial role in Hanga Séra's work. During her stay in Balzers, she was able to explore this language and its peculiarities not in books, but rather in the street names of the community. A street where there was once a garden with apple trees now exists only as a sign with the white word "Böngerta" on a blue background. This impressively illustrates how language can preserve the memory of past places and stories. But hardly anyone thinks about where this apple orchard still exists today. All that remains of it is the name on the street sign in a language that is no longer spoken by anyone these days.
At the heart of her Balzner Diary are words, a collection of thoughts and quotes from Hannah Arendt, artfully composed into a collage of different elements. These three primary elements are firstly hair, collected from local people. The second element is wafer-thin sheets of wood - a waste product of furniture making that she had brought with her from Graubünden in two suitcases. The third element is the exchange with the local inhabitants.

The spoken word, which has been wandering the streets of Balzers since the Middle Ages - or even longer - and has been passed on from mouth to mouth, finds a living continuation in her work. Hanga Séra carefully preserves these words, immortalising them in the wooden tracks and in the entries of her Balzers diary, in order to preserve the memories of the apple orchard even when it has long since been felled.

The diary entries unfold into artful compositions. The hair fugues on the one hand as a participatory element, donated by the locals, and on the other hand as a link to her earlier work "Corona Diary". The wooden tracks, for their part, establish a link to the most recent work "Zurich Diary" from 2023.
Your breath is my home. This sentence is not found in any book. It was written down by Hanga. It was created by Hanga and is created anew every time it is uttered, to embody the unadulterated
truth and leave no room for banalities. The truth that lies in this sentence is so profound that it should never give way to a lie. To ensure that this sentence corresponds to the undisputed truth within this protected framework, she chose the left hand to paint her compositions. This hand is considered the "immaculate" hand, the pure hand that never wrote down a lie. So pure, in fact, that it may not even be able to, or may never have learned to.

The approach to capture and internalise these profound insights in their full intensity could be one of the main reasons that inspires Hanga to create personal and intimate series. Moving through these pictorial compositions, Hanga Séra expresses her creative process in the following way: "I apply the paint exactly where the image seems to need it." Yet her words carry a deeper meaning that may go unnoticed at first glance. Thus she distances herself from the mere objectivity of a map.

Her art is always characterised by the subtle transformation of the existing. By internalising the familiar and giving it a new identity, she transforms the old into something new, the known into the unknown. Her work shows that she does not simply regard the map as a sober image of seas, roads, cities and countries, but as an abstract pictorial composition that is still imperfect. Her artistic intervention completes the picture and gives it something harmonious and yet so personal, which was not present in its original form.

Her work is characterised by the idea of collecting and reinventing. Each collected object brings with it its own, often hidden history, which Hanga carefully reinterprets. In this way, the old story becomes an integral part of her own artistic biography. These objects, which no longer have any meaning in their original use, find a new life and purpose in Hanga's art.

The everyday objects that no one needs any more and that Hanga Séra integrates into her art become poetry. This transition from the everyday to the poetic is not only reflected in the ready- made objects, but also in the almost childlike naivety with which she looks at the world and constantly rediscovers it. She shows us that the simple beauty of poetry can reveal itself even in a geography book, in sentences like "Continents move as fast as fingernails grow". Such sentences make life seem so tender and touching, like something we gently press to our chest.

"Your breath is my home" is thus more than just an exhibition. It is a declaration of love. A series in love that captures and presents in a unique and personal way the complexity, fragility and relentless struggle that comes with life.

In closing, I invite you all to explore the beauty and extraordinarily complex, yet profoundly simple world of this exhibition. Let yourselves be carried away by its fascination and take time to contemplate the works and immerse yourself in their depth. I wish each and every one of you to find something of your own personal "Daham" in this exhibition, even if it is only in a single word.

Thank you.

– KI

Society has always been fearful of too much information, from the apple of the tree of knowledge to the many places the printing press was immediately outlawed. So, both the truths and media hysterics surrounding all the talk of a deteriorating society facing the rapid onslaught of the internet and digital technologies, of seemingly all images and facts available like tidal waves, makes a predictable kind of sense. In all of that we often forget the utopian dreams, the actual non-malignant possibilities, hidden within all great changes of access and action. That printing press led towards a humanist awakening, as well as the cementing of power for a different christian church. The photograph promised a form of objective truth, but better arms propaganda in ways consistently impressive and terrifying over the course of the past century. It’s a stratified hopeful aspect of all this that we witness in these works by Pascal Sender and Fridolin Schoch. Their titular tandem vibes suggest an ease of collaboration and comfort with information overlapping and feeding off of itself. With found elements, images and drawings these works speak to the opportunities of breaking away from, or maybe breaking within, two-dimensional representation without negating it. Their layering of the many, both physically and in an added digital realm, relates not to some kind of Matrix dystopia, but as a kind of joyous extension of the illusions painting and drawing have trafficked in for the past few centuries, highlighting the validity of illusory composition in a world in which the IRL is potentially subsumed by new and created realities. The layering here is both physical and conceptual, within paintings, within collaborative drawings, and an app projecting the three dimensional, further activating the existing. The graphics of today anchor these works in our time, the images all together here are not of some future but of our now. Their insistence that their work exists here, rather than in science fiction, is important and lucid. A tangle of gesture and content. The last great jump in the possibilities of two-dimensional space occurred about a century ago, as abstraction allowed the depiction of more than mere life. The early utopian hopes of the constructivists seem apt in thinking about Sender and Schoch’s experiments here. Their explorations of new possibilities in the creation of and accessing of art shows a vital reinvention of the two-dimensional in the 21st century. It’s one where computers aren’t coming for our lives and livelihoods, but might offer passages to new worlds built from all the images and information of this earth.

– Mitchell Anderson

In spring 2018, a travel grant from the Aargauer Kuratorium enabled Michael Günzburger to revisit specific places in California, places he has waited to work at for years. His research at the time focused on the topic of skin. The artist recorded his impressions and views in several drawing books, one of which is dedicated to Hidden Valley in Joshua Tree National Park.

While camping among large monzogranite boulders, Günzburger selected geological findings that interested him. On April 5 he drew some of the park's iconic barren rock formations in a non-stop session. Doing so, visual landmarks were translated into a concept of signs. If geology represents both the past and an understanding of locality in general, these personal observations, once taken out of context and place, turned into memories. The artist’s drawings of found forms transformed into imaginary entities open to different associations.

Günzburger guides our gaze along bold ink pen strokes that trace, follow and make us feel the skin of the paper, similar to the way millenia of rain falling and low temperatures worked on the valley’s surface, shaping the landscape’s unique morphology. A sensual gesture, where suggestions of bodies create an intimate moment of fantasies unleashed. Sexiness.

In addition to drawing to the point of exhaustion, Günzburger always explores the question "When is enough enough?“. In this case the series came to an end when the last page of the blank book was filled.

A set of 36 drawings from the original book will be published in an edition of 2, 1 exhibition copy. Details upon request.

Zine accompanying the exhibition published by Innen, Zurich.

As a performance and multimedia artist, Martina Morger often works collaboratively and critically questions social and economic working and living conditions. She persistently names social grievances and transforms fundamental issues of our existence into sometimes physically exhausting and sometimes unsettling performances. Martina Morger deals with the position of women and in particular with the position of the female artist in modern capitalist society. She examines and reflects on female and queer voices, addressing topics such as technology, labor and performance.

The exhibition Distant Lover refers to an unfulfilled longing, emphasizes the absence of things or of closeness and connects to an inaccessible reality. It is a reference to an achievement-orientated society: the optimization of body and mind is ubiquitous and essential for function and performance. Martina Morger precisely thwarts the inequality of this model of an ideal society and exposes the principle of the achievement subject. Exhaustion syndromes such as emotional and physical inadequacies are treated symptomatically and are in imbalance with the collective ideal of absolute performance orientation. Martina Morger finds a sensual visual language to unveil these collective inadequacy.

Martina Morger was born in 1989 in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. She studied media studies at the University of Zurich and fine arts at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) from 2015 to 2018, before completing a master’s in fine arts practice at the Glasgow School of Arts in 2019. She is co-curator of Perrrformat, which brings performance art into urban public space. In spring 2020 she completed a studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and a year later she received the Manor Art Prize St. Gallen 2021. She lives and works in Balzers and Hannover.

Nadia Veronese
St Gallen, March 2022

BELETAGE’s exhibition on GAFFA is the third solo exhibition after Berne and St Gallen dedicated to this Swiss artist collective. It presents a spatial intervention in three rooms in addition to the foyer adapted to the venue’s functional givens of a chiropractic practice. The exhibition will be accompanied by an Instagram-takeover from 5 July to 15 August 2021 and an artists’ zine reflecting the collective’s multi-disciplinary channels of actions.

Gaffa

When the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush was releasing her single suspended in gaffa, recorded in 1982, questions arose about the made-up word „gaffa“. In a review of her song, Bush revealed that she was referring to the gaffer tape, a thick industrial tape often used to tie up a large number of electric cables or leads.

In our case, „Gaffa“ is not only referring to a made-up word but also to a certain artistic practice. „Gaffa“ stands for Freddie’s surname. Freddie Gaffa is a quirky fictional character, who lives in Tenerife. Since 2016, he has been publishing a zine called GAFFA on monthly basis. The zine gets produced and distributed with the help of his four nephews, who are the artist collective behind this character: Dario Forlin, Wanja Harb, Lucian Kunz, and Linus Lutz. GAFFA is also a platform for exhibition projects, all sorts of merchandise, and an edition for which artists and illustrators outside the collective get invited to realize a zine.

Zine

A zine (short form of magazine) is an affordable, fast, and easy to produce publication format. The term was originally used in the 1970s for non-commercial music brochures reporting from events of each scene. It used to be mainly a subcultural form of communication. Today, the zine is a respected form of art often produced in small editions with the help of an alternative printing process such as risograph, photocopy, or silk screen. It articulates the in-between of fine art and design, and is easy to distribute through postal mail.

GAFFA’s latest coup was an interactive live video-show, a digital zine workshop, during the Kulturlandsgemeinde in Teufen this May 2021. A presenter was describing in detail a certain image he received beforehand through an open call. The audience in Teufen and at home translated what was heard into a new image they could give / send via mobile transmission to the host. After the video-show, the new pictures were laid out as a first zine proof by GAFFA, which will be properly published this fall. The format was called „GAFFA-TV“, and could be read as a reference to legendary Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting, an instructional television program aired from 1983 to 1994 on PBS, by using the simple aesthetics of live shopping television channels, where the audience can interact with the television host via an inserted telephone number. The found format reflects the artist collective’s modus operandi: highly skilled and professional but intentionally low key. A popular television format is here paired with a state of the art internet broadcasting technique.
When Freddie’s four nephews meet, they tape collages and photograph as well as draw sketches or sculpt to find the newest issue of the zine. The process is spontaneous and uncensored. The found materials often sourced from different popular print media is freed of original context, partially rearranged in an intentionally childlike manner and always exaggerated for surprising tongue-in-cheek comments. The clash of high and low is making one laugh. Here comes the word „gaffa“ into play again. For putting together an analog layout of a zine, you don’t need much more than a paper, glue, or tape, but not the strong gaffer tape. An exaggeration to the absurd is being used as an artistic strategy of reflection.

Artist collectives

Artist collectives - a group of artists working together, usually under their own management, towards shared aims - have occurred throughout art history. Early forms gathered around ancient sculpture workshops in Greece and Italy. In the beginning of the 20th century, artist collectives, such as the Futurists or Dadaists, followed a common and often cultural-political goal, but usually retained their artistic individuality. Over the past five decades, the number of artists working collaboratively has increased remarkably. In addition, the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous group of feminists and female artists formed in 1985, put it: “There are many collaborative practices […] in film, theater, and music. The concept of the individual genius is outdated.”

Freddie Gaffa is a wildcard and an understatement to surprise with a professional self-publishing entity as well as a multi-faceted body of work. Nothing is real, but everything is very authentic. It is a collective alter ego. In addition, art history is full of aliases, alter ego, and imposters, such as Marcel Duchamp, who used Rrose Sélavy to expand the traditional definitions of art and artist. Freddie Gaffa’s fictional identity is bourgeois by choice, and allows the four artists to morph into a new superhuman uniting different skills. He is impersonalizing certain clichés and incorporating Swissness. Gaffa promotes his work in broken English with the aid of (Swiss) German words. He is socially compliant. For Freddie, a leather jacket symbolizes a rebel and long hair a revolution. Tenerife stands for the dream coconut island of a retired working-class, mainly of German speaking countries. With Freddie Gaffa, a character was formed, which is playing with our expectations. You would never expect Freddie to be an artist. He is the living proof of everybody can do it. You just have to send your four nephews your ideas, and they do it for you.

Short biography

GAFFA has been given a work grant by the city of St Gallen in 2018 and by the canton St Gallen in 2019. Previous solo exhibitions included Get rich or die tryin’ at the Pausenraum in Berne and Sluglife at the Architektur Forum Ostschweiz in St Gallen, both in 2020.