Christoph Draeger (1965), a Swiss artist who has been living and working in New York since 1996, invites us to share in his fascination with the beauty of destruction and chaos. Berdaguer & Pejus This French duo who live and work in Marseilles present one of their living spaces. Skilled in radical and utopian architecture, Berdaguer & Pejus reject the role of artist: who plays house.
Christoph Draeger (1965), a Swiss artist who has been living and working in
New York since 1996, invites us to share in his fascination with the beauty
of destruction and chaos.
Through his productions which abound in complexity and extremes (Apocalypso
Place, installation 1999/2000, Tueur né, installation 1997/2001), Draeger
uses parody to reflect on reality. The "Apocalypso Place" installation is a
desolate living room, in which a sitcom set in the post Great Disaster era
is playing. In a second living room equally desolate as the first, three
individuals are waiting impatiently for the next alarming newsflash. Their
euphoria is only reached when they become the subjects of a report on
disaster victims by MSNBC 24 Disaster and Survival Channel.
The first version of this project was created for the Roebling Hall Gallery,
New York in September 2001. The events that rocked this city have given this
exhibition a certain uneasy resonance. Nevertheless the exhi-bition went
ahead.
The Der letzte Ritter/Le dernier chevalier/The Last Rider deals directly
with the familiar world of leisure, of good times, and death, lurking in the
background, which finally catches up with us all. Once more, the artist
examines subjects which have become his stock-in-trade: natural and human
destruction, and their in-herent devastating shock value.
Christoph Draeger is responsible for the Beaufort 12 exhibition at the
Neuchâtel arteplage, part of Expo 02.
___________
Berdaguer & Péjus
This French duo who live and work in Marseilles present one of their
living spaces. Skilled in radical and utopian architecture, Berdaguer &
Péjus reject the role of artist: who plays house. The focus of their work
is neurological malfunctions, using them as translators, filters, or
projects of spatial reality. Les Habitats neurodomotiques, 1999, are the
fruit of this research. Take the example of a subject suffering from
hemi-anopia (who has lost his left field of vision). Berdaguer &Péjus
recreates this by constructing a house where the right is non-existent: it
is round, spins, never comes into contact with the right, and with a
slightly slanted floor which constantly redirects objects and paths to the
right.
Locked-chamber-sas/design neuronal, 2001: an enormous, heavenly
transparent ball installed in a chemi-cal environment, bathed in
phosphorescent light and veiled in an artificial mist, is the
piece/atmosphere which the duo will recreate in Fri-Art.
This project is defined by the artists as: An artificial
psychophysiological landscape aimed at placing the viewer in a transitory
space between the inside of his own body and his external environment.
They have a coined a language which defines a landscape as an immersive
installation or a reduced model. The duo considers art a trick or device of
the frequently deceptive subject/object or inside/outside interface, which
exacerbates or substitutes the world as such. It is difficult today to
create art which would only exist outside the body, only reproducing visual
forms to be decoded semantically. (Philippe Rahm).
The Berdaguer & Péjus exhibition is a joint project with the Belluard
Bollwerk International (BBI).
Opening on Saturday June 15, 5 p.m.
Every Thursday during the exhibition, Sushi in La Cuisine
Reservations (before Wednesday evening): 026 323 23 51
Thursday 20 June at 8 p.m.: Guided tour of the exhibition with Michel
Ritter, Director of Fri-Art
Opening hours: Tues.-Fri. 2-6 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 2-5 p.m., Thursday evenings
8-10 p.m.
Next exhibition: Carte blanche for Hou Hanru, guest curator, 01.09-20.10.02
Opening Saturday August 31st, 5 p.m.
FRI-ART Centre d'Art Contemporain - Kunsthalle - Petites-Rames 22 - CH 1700
Fribourg
Phone 026 323 23 51 - Fax 026 323 15 34