4/6/2007
A Collideorscape
Mamco, Geneve
Rolywholyover, second episode. 5 monograph shows
Rolywholyover, second episode.
5 monograph shows
PETER KOGLER, Everynowhere
JÉRÔME LEUBA, Spectre (the Manor Prix culturel, 2007)
BERNARD PIFFARETTI, Presque Suisse (in coll. with Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain, Sète)
BERT THEIS, Agglomérations
HANNAH VILLIGER, Je serai mon propre ciseau (curator: Eric Hattan)
This summer Mamco is giving the general public the chance to discover
the work of five artists featured in their first large-scale exhibitions
in French-speaking Switzerland. The five artists are Peter Kogler,
Jérôme Leuba, Bernard Piffaretti, Bert Theis and Hannah Villiger.
From 6 June to 9 September 2007, Mamco will be hosting these five new shows under the overall
title A Collideorscape (showing openings 5 June at 6 p.m. and presentation of the Manor Prix culturel
at 7 p.m.). Be they young or well-established artists, the five, invited this summer for the second
part of the exhibition cycle Rolywholyover, are taking part in their most important show in Frenchspeaking
Switzerland. On the museum’s fourth floor, the Austrian artist Peter Kogler has designed
an exhibition that recapitulates the different aspects of his work according to the principle of collage
by using assemblages and overlayering of printed works and videos. Another notable event
scheduled for this summer is the first major show in French-speaking Switzerland of Hannah Villiger’s
photographic work. This Swiss artist, who died in 1997 at the age of 45, left behind an oeuvre
that has proved pioneering for women artists and for the importance she accorded to photography
in art. Jérôme Leuba, also representing the Swiss art scene, is the winner of the 2007 Manor Prix
culturel, which brings with it an invitation to show his latest work at Mamco. With over a hundred
canvases and drawings, the show spotlighting Bernard Piffaretti’s work largely covers the output of
this artist, who has produced art for 20 years by following the same protocol. Finally, Bert Theis, an
artist from Luxembourg who is mainly involved in projects for urban settings, will present several
facets of his oeuvre, including personal artworks and group pieces.
Following the installation he created in 1999, Mamco is inviting the Austrian artist Peter Kogler (Innsbruck, 1959)
back to practice his art inside the museum. This time he’s been given the seven galleries of the museum’s fourth
floor, where he will present a number of aspects of his work, a first in Switzerland. Kogler began his career in Vienna
at the start of the 1980s, producing cardboard figures with charcoal drawings that were midway between the human
body and geometrical-architectural shapes. In 1984 he began using the computer to create motifs that are the
result of complex repetitions and combinations of the same sign (ant, brain, or pipe, for example). These compositions,
which owe quite a lot to digital aesthetics, were reproduced on canvas, paper, cloth, or in video and then
used to cover the walls and occasionally even the floor and ceiling of the spaces reworked by the artist. The show
Everynowhere is based on the principle of the collage, echoing the proliferating character of his art, with assemblages
and overlayerings of works produced at different periods in his career. The approach brings a renewed
outlook on the whole of his oeuvre, from the early independent canvases to the major reconfigurations of specific
spaces.
As the winner of the 2007 Manor Prix culturel, a prize awarded every two years to young Swiss artists in Geneva,
Jérôme Leuba (Geneva, 1970) has been invited to show several new works at Mamco. These include Battlefield #
27/ unlimited, a video shot by the artist in 2006 in the Unlimited main exhibition hall of the Basel Art Fair just before
the artworks were put in place. Over the course of a long stroll through the venue’s empty spaces, we see looming
up from the dim light white modules and never really know whether we are facing a real space, a model, or the set
for a film. Such shams and shifts of meaning lie at the very heart of the Genevan artist’s work. Whether through
Press release : A Collideorscape. Rolywholyover, second episode. 6 June - 9 September 2007. 3
video, photography, or installation, Leuba works to bring to light the reflexes that images condition in our reading
of them. Paying close attention to trivial events and news and the images conveyed by the media, the artist draws
his inspiration from there to recreate situations that play on the ambiguity of signs and the equivocal nature of what
we are shown.
In the title, a nod toward this French artist’s Swiss origins: Bernard Piffaretti’s Presque Suisse features some one
hundred canvases that range from recent pieces to earlier works dating from the late 1980s, along with a large body
of drawings done “after paintings.” Bernard Piffaretti (Saint-Étienne, 1955) belongs to a family of “protocol” artists,
i.e., artists who adhere to a precise routine. Since 1984-85, he has produced paintings by following the same
pictorial process without fail: preliminary drawing of a vertical median line, application of a motif on one of the two
planes created by the line, and duplication of the same motif on the opposite plane. It is impossible to tell which
part was painted first, to distinguish the copy from the original. For the artist, the main objective of this method
is to escape the subjectivity of the initial gesture (“The reduplication allows me to cool any gestural or instinctual
act.”) The vast collection of works displayed in Geneva reveals an incredible variety of forms and motifs that show
not a trace of any continuous style. Piffaretti’s paintings thus appear to the viewer as absolutely different from one
another while being deeply similar nonetheless.
Sculptor, architect, performer, and video filmmaker, Bert Theis (Luxembourg, 1952) develops projects whose
objective is to improve the quality of life in public space. He creates structures that possess a useful character,
whether they are intended for the museum visitor (creation of benches for Mamco or Luxembourg’s Mudam), the
inhabitant of a particular neighborhood, or the user of a tram (Spirale Warburg, 2002, for the Place de la République
in Strasbourg). An important part of his work revolves around a collective interdisciplinary practice. In Milan, where
he lives, Theis founded in 2002 Out (Office for Urban Transformation), an enterprise that develops projects having
a democratic, social and environmental aim. He is also one of the founders of Isola dell’Arte, an association that
helped to restructure an abandoned factory in a working-class Milan neighborhood and transform the top floor into
a contemporary art center (the institution has just launched an appeal for support, following the destruction by the
city authorities of one part of the building in late April). For Agglomérations, his show at Mamco, Theis will present
his most recent personal works, urban interventions and a series of large-scale photo collages. He will also devote
a section of the exhibition to his group activities within Out and Isola dell’Arte.
Hannah Villiger (Zug, 1951 – 1997) carried out truly pioneering work with regard to both women artists and the
important role she gave to photography in her art. Je serai mon propre ciseau is the most significant retrospective
show of the artist’s output in photography to be mounted in French-speaking Switzerland. The show’s curator, Eric
Hattan, has brought together some 40 works by the artist, which date as far back as the early ‘80s. Another high
point of the show is a series of Villiger drawings dating from 1991 that will be exhibited here for the first time, along
with a collection of original Polaroids that are very rarely seen. Ten years after her death, Villiger remains a remarkable
artist who has left behind a singular and exceptional body of work in which she thought of photography in terms
of sculpture. Beginning in the early ‘80s she made photography her sole instrument and her own body her main
subject. Unlike other artists of her generation, she used her body as a raw material and avoided any kind of tableau
or staged effects à la Cindy Sherman. She photographed it in fragments, using a Polaroid camera and adopting
novel points of view, and would then make large-scale reproductions of the resulting photographs. With her Block
series, Villiger assembled photos of the same parts of her body, then “sculpted” them to give shape to impressive
large-scale compositions.
Along with the exhibitions making up A Collideorscape, Mamco is also showing until 2 September an installation by Xavier
Veilhan called La Forêt (1998) at the new Bac exhibition venue (28 rue des Bains and 10 rue des Vieux-Grenadiers, 1205
Geneva. Free admission, Tuesday to Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Info: www.bac-ge.ch).
Events Program
Wednesday 6 June 2007, 6:30 p.m.
A talk on the Bert Theis show Agglomérations
With Bert Theis and Christian Bernard
Tuesday 28 August 2007, 6:30 p.m.
A talk on the Hannah Villiger show Je serai mon propre ciseau
With Eric Hattan, the show’s curator, and Loa Pictet
Monday 3 September 2007, 6:30 p.m.
A talk on the Bernard Piffaretti show Presque Suisse
With Bernard Piffaretti and Christian Bernard
Flying guides
Sundays, all day long the museum offers visitors flying guides, who are ready to act at a moment’s notice, for a tour of the
shows or a conversation around a given work of art.
Sponsors
Mamco is managed by Fondamco, a public foundation supported by the Mamco Foundation, the City and Canton of
Geneva. Fondamco would like to thank its private and public partners: Ambassade de France en Suisse / AFAA/Cultures-
France - Ministère des Affaires étrangères / Fondation Valeria Rossi di Montelera / Forum culturel autrichien à Berne / JTI
/ Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie / Loterie romande / Mandarin Oriental Hôtel du Rhône/ Sotheby’s / Alain Choisy /
Teo Jakob / Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain, Sète.
Press officer: Clarisse Jaouen, c.jaouen@mamco.ch, T. +41 (0)22 320 61 22
Press conference: Tuesday 5 June 2007, 11 a.m.
Opening: Tuesday 5 June 2007, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Presentation of the Manor Prix culturel: Tuesday 5 June 2007, at 7 p.m.
Mamco Musée d’art moderne et contemporain
10, rue des Vieux-Grenadiers, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland
Opening hours
The museum is open Tuesday to Friday from noon to 6 p.m.
Closed Mondays as well as Wednesday 1 August and Thursday 6 September 2007.