balzerARTprojects is committed to presenting socially and culturally relevant exhibitions which challenge cultural assumptions. The gallery is a forum for themed exhibitions, provocative discussion and artistic expression. "Rock--Paper--Scissors" features:
Andi Bauer (*1981 in Böblingen, Germany) looks for artistic relationships shared between photography, sculpture and performance. For example, he meticulously arranges everyday objects in unusual ways only to destroy, collapse, explode or crush the arrangement again. The performative aspect is then captured by the camera. By abstracting his chosen objects, he focuses our attention on the everyday, the unnoticed. His camera documents the facts — it is a tool that helps to make the viewer wonder about process, concept, and the integrity of the depicted. The photograph as object, as the final aesthetic product, marks a crucial point in a continuous process of art making - the process is ephemeral and transient and the product is the record of the process, and as such, permanent. Bauer's photographs mark the moment when the work is most alive, when the tension and intensity is the highest. Bauer also builds sculptures from teenage fantasy cartoon books. His sculptures are intricate, vertical labyrinths of geometrically patterned pages.
Domenico Billari (*
Tom Fellner (*1956 in New York City) lives and works in Zürich, Switzerland. Fellner works on large scaled watercolor works inspired by monster toys" discovered on the internet and magazines that pay homage to art history references with overtly sexual overtones. Fellner's painting emphasize the gap between low and high aesthetics while remaining humorous and ironic connecting children's toys, sex and "high art" principles.
EddiE haRA (* 1957 in Salatiga, Java), lives and works in Basel and Jakarta. He is one of the fifteen most important contemporary artists coming out of Indonesia right now. In the summer of 2011, his work toured Asia and Great Britain in a group show representing contemporary Indonesian positions. ("Indonesian Eye: Fantasies and Realities", Ciputra Gallery Jakarta, Indonesia and Saatchi Gallery London, UK) haRA has shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Cuba, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Bold and colorful depictions of beasts, cartoon-like figures and animals characterize his visual language. Synonymous for the reality of human interaction, these creatures display an almost infinite variety of emotions such as anger, humor, cynicism, diabolism, love, happiness, sadness, melancholia and optimism. EddiE haRA clearly positions himself visually outside traditional parameters. haRA's work is complex, but humorous and the viewers can, but does not have to, read it politically.
Nici Jost (*1984 Banff, Canada) is a young conceptual/multimedia/photography artist from Zürich. Essential is the exploration of the sublime tensions between technology and nature, space and perception, identity and image. In her installation and photographs, Jost pushes the boundaries between reality, fantasy and fiction, making the viewer re-evaluate his/her natural and conceptual reference models as the audience enters imaginary, yet surprisingly real worlds with intense colors and surreal perspectives. The collaboration of artist and viewers is essential. The mobilization of our senses to attune us to questions of space and place and the meaning of time is the center of her undertakings. Jost's photographic work transforms objects and commonly found views. —Her pictures freely traverse the myriad paths of human expression, desires, dreams and wishes in physical manifestations.
Oliver Lang (*1966) is a photographer characterized by a tendency to act as more of an anthropologist who examines and contrasts different cultures. Lang's investigates visual relationships between individuals and their cultural surroundings. Oliver's "Peoples" series reveals subjects" as smiling, but not necessarily at ease. Lang meets his subjects within his everyday: parking lots, shopping malls, beaches, streets and familiar places capturing subtle emotions of discomfort.
Sebastian Mejia (*1980 Bogotà, Colombia) experiments with objects, photographs, videos and artistic installations. His work is motivated by cultural and visual surroundings resulting in experimental 2D-photographs. Sebastian shares, "I have always found it difficult to talk about my work. My creative attempts and artistic experiments are unseizable for my intellect, my rational thinking — I myself cannot comprehend them or bring them down to a few words — all I can do is attempt a 'subjective approximation' of what I do and feel. Often, I have difficulties translating my work and expressing my thought processes into words. To formulate them intelligently, I have started to work with books and notebooks, but left out letters, words, literary or scientific texts, type writers, poems or just scribbled notes that show traces of the hand of an author. I am searching for hidden shapes and images in the structures of the texts or even pictures — this is the motor, the driving force of my work. (...) In general, I am looking for freedom from narrative pressures, to bring out a feeling that cannot be seized with words. I often see myself as uncreative and unimaginative artist. Here, humor serves as valve for relief, comic relief as they say — I am on the other hand by nature rather un-humorous, a very serious person. I inject all my humor into me works, I laugh through my art."
Mimi von Moos (*1969 in Luzern) lives and works in Basel. Much of von Moos' work is characterized by an interest in language, often manifesting itself in a playful and mischievous manner. She is a gifted story teller and writer and her artistic positions can be "read" as ways to make visual sense of the written and spoken word. There are very serious concerns at the heart of Mimi's practice. Mimi is fascinated by the nature of communication and language's inherent problems, as well as the role of the artist as communicator and manipulator of visual symbols, as seen in her audio-visual installation "Textil/e."
Olga Vonmoos