Swiss Art Awards 2009

Sébastien Mettraux (images above) was one of the privileged artists to receive an award. However, after visiting the Swiss Art Awards 2009 exhibition I realized that the works which actually caught my eye hadn’t, in the most cases, been contemplated with any kind of award – which only serves to prove my lack of taste!;-)

It seemed to me that the most interesting works definitely belonged to Ariane Andereggen, Emanuel Geisser, Kathrin Sonntag, Yves Mettler and Monica Jäger. In addition to these, I also enjoyed Clare Goodwins’ neo-constructivism painting, Seline Baumgartners’ monumental trailer wrapped in white fabric, Maya Bringolfs’ coloured PU-foam monumental object with a couch and a table pilled up and Uriel Orlows’ installation “These Great Times”, which included a free hand-out newspaper with printed photos of political historical leaders done with a magic marker.

Visual and performance artist Ariane Andereggen created a multimedia wall installation containing video, collage, drawings and writing, everything assembled in an apparent anarchic manner. Using linguistic and visual-appropriation strategies and actions, Andereggens’ work investigates into different concepts such as body, archive, spectacle and memory in a punk/ absurdish style. Born in 1969, she first studied acting at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern and later graduated in Media Art (2000) at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.

“Satellite, Now Here Nowhere” is an installation comprising a video projection, two mirrors, tripods, a disco ball motor and nylon thread by Berlin-based Emanuel Geisser. The video projection shows an inhospitable landscape, whose footage originates from an expedition to the K2 in the 1950s. The rotating mirror mounted on the engine casts its shadow on the mountains on the screen and then on the surrounding walls of the installation room as it moves around. In the point where it meets the second standing mirror tripod, the word NORTH is reflected onto the opposite wall for a short moment.

1981-born Berlin-based artist Kathrin Sonntag presented a booklet and a series of 81 slides in which arrangements of objects and tools belonging to the studio of the artist could be seen. These works seem to revolve around the question of how we can perceive worldly things around us differently just upon observation. In some moments, this re-staging brings about surreal perspectives, in which hazard and weird dominate.

Winner of a public art contest in Aarburg in 2006, Swiss-born and Berlin-based artist Yves Mettler seems interested in reflecting about memory and public space through his built architectural models in which an audio memory is included. His submission to the Swiss Art Awards follows this principle once more. It consisted of a group of architectural models done in cardboard with speakers and an audio recording.