Search results for ""Author Kathleen Buhler""

Colour and light as sensory stimulus and the phenomenon of light encountering surfaces are core elements of the work of artists Silvia Gertsch, born in Switzerland in 1963, and the German Xerxes Ach, born in 1957. Gertsch works on reverse-glass, using snapshots of young people in summer, sunbathing, strolling down the street, or children absorbed in play. Ach has turned to micro-phenomena in which light encounters various materials, is refracted in various ways, and generates abstract visual compositions. In spite of their different stylistic languages - realism on the one side, abstract colour field painting on the other - occupying antagonistic positions in contemporary painting, the two artists take a similar approach, starting from photos they take themselves and digitally edit, as well as found ones recording fleeting visual stimuli. Coinciding with a dual exhibition of Silvia Gertsch and Xerxes Ach at the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, this new book features their work from two decades. Richly illustrated, it puts their differing pictorial languages in a dance-like dialogue, revealing each artist's relation to current artistic discourses.

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For three months Biel, Switzerland, hosted a special kind of sculpture. It was special not simply because it was by one of Switzerland’s most famous contemporary artists—Thomas Hirschhorn—and dedicated to one of the most prominent authors in the history of Swiss literature, Robert Walser. Beyond that, this sculpture was a redefinition of sculpture itself, because what takes on a plastic form here is not made of stone, steel, or bronze. It is society itself that helped to develop this work of art. In 2016 Thomas Hirschhorn and the curator Kathleen Bühler began doing field research in Biel, the city of Robert Walser’s birth, connecting with residents, clubs, artists, literati, and experts. This resulted in a multifaceted agenda. Every day the two offered events such as readings, walking tours, lectures, and children’s activities. All of this ultimately comprised the Robert Walser-Sculpture. Never before has an entire city been integrated into a temporary work of art in this way.

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Korea is still a divided country that apparently never found its way out of the Cold War. The differences between the socialist North, which follows a dynastic leadership cult, and the capitalist South, with its developed democracy, could hardly be greater. Encompassing all areas of life, this divergence is also reflected in the art of the two countries: through the vibrant contemporary art scene in South Korea and the socialist-realist tradition of painting in North Korea, two diametrically opposed artistic attitudes exist in parallel, reflecting the incompatibility of the political systems and the stark differences in the way of life of the populations. To mark the exhibition of both North and South Korean works from the Sigg Collection at the Kunstmuseum Bern, a comprehensive, richly illustrated catalogue is being published, which sheds light upon the theme of the border in contemporary Korean art from both sides.

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