‹Homebase?›: Erik Dettwiler, Andrea Loux, Verena Schwab, Markus Schwander


21.8.-25.9.04
 
‹Homebase?› is the title for the season start 2004/2005. The gallery presents a group exhibition with four Swiss artists, who lived in foreign countries for a long time and who socialise and network with the abroad. ‹Homebase?› does not want to establish relationships didactically, how many residences on studios can change a work. Rather it consists of showing generally, how important and effective it is, that artists contact the abroad for their artistic development. Only in this way an intercultural dialog can be formed, which can be carried on within the scope of an always more globalised environment. Studio grants are important and require – in spite of general economy measures- further support. The four presented positions show, how important an exchange over the frontiers is – also for the whole art scene.

Erik Dettwiler belongs to the great connoisseurs of the Balkans. Numerous travels lead him through former Yugoslavia, Albania and Macedonia. He roams in these territories and searches motives, which he can process via photography and video. He enables an unexpected gaze in a long «closed» world – profound and some times astonishingly humorous.

Andrea Loux has close links with Berlin. Her works are concerned with great topics of the interior in the most different realizations. Ink drawings, then photos or recently also collages. Her collages are created with finds of old furniture catalogs and are overworked supplementary with gouache, graphite pencil or India ink.

Verena Schwab travels a lot to Italy – solitary landscapes or cleared vegetable markets form the idea pool for many of her works. «Rescue Study» is a poetic approach to the life. Wrapped in a warming lifesaver foil the artist placed herself as a glimmering sculpture in an idyllic landscape. A video and corresponding photos illuminate different phases of the performance.

Markus Schwander has numerous contacts to South Africa. Again and again you can find in his works an examination of this country – particularly obvious in his drawings. His plastic work fits optimally in the graphics; enlarged chewing gums enable an unusual macro view, the supposed formless becomes an unexpected topography.

The positions are medially very different and still there is a beautiful general view and an extremely exciting insight into the actual Swiss art tendencies.

Bernhard Bischoff, August 2004