Com&Com (Marcus Gossolt / Johannes M. Hedinger)
The artist collective Com&Com was founded in 1997 by Marcus Gossolt (*1969) and Johannes M. Hedinger (*1971). They currently live in Zurich and St.Gallen and work in situ. Depending on the project, the two core members are reinforced with several employees.
In addition to cross-media, participatory and collaborative long-term projects, Com&Com also produces individual works in classic media such as drawing, painting, sculpture, photo, video and performance.
Her early work can be attributed to conceptual and media art and experienced a first high point with the solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich (“C-Files: Tell Saga”, 2000), followed by Harald Szeemann’s invitation to the 2001 Venice Biennale.
Projects followed that increasingly made use of public and media space: the monument dispute over “Mocmoc” (since 2003), which made it to the referendum, and the human Ready-Made Dada (“Gugusdada”, since 2004) for the reopening of Cabaret Voltaire .
With the multimedia road movie “The Big One” (2005), the “Post-ironic Manifesto” (2008) and the first retrospective (“La realité dépasse la fiction”, 2010), Com&Com’s work experienced a programmatic reorientation: away from irony, provocation and strategy, towards the direct and the truthful, as well as the collaborative, procedural and open. In addition to an increasing number of analog series (drawing, painting, sculpture), several long-term projects, some of which continue to this day, were launched. These include the series of sculptures “Tree” (since 2010), the wandering Land Art installation “Bergkanzel” (since 2016) and the international travel and exchange project on the Appenzell tree trunk “Bloch” (since 2011), which to date has over 600 collaborators in connects twelve countries on five continents.
For some years now, Com&Com has been increasingly joining forces on transdisciplinary projects with partners from science and research (sociology, political science, history, etc.), such as in the survey projects “Point de Suisse” (2014/15) and “NEXPLORER” (since 2019), the pilot project for the next state exhibition (2028).
Participation in nine biennials (Venice, Shanghai, Moscow, Singapore, Sharjah, Urals, etc.), solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Zürich, artworks in Berlin and the Knockdown Center in New York; Group exhibitions at the Center Pompidou Metz, ZKM Karlsruhe, 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai, Pratt Manhattan Gallery New York, Kassler Kunstverein, Kunstmuseum Bern, Migros Museum Zurich, among others are among the fields of activity of Com&Com.
Com&Com will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2022.
