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1/2/2012

Nic Hess

Grieder Contemporary Projects, Berlin

Grieder Contemporary is delighted to announce the first solo exhibition by the Swiss artist, Nic Hess, being presented in the gallery's new venue in Zurich. Alongside an expansive installation occupying the whole of the gallery's main exhibition space, the artist will be showing a number of works on paper and sculptures, as well as an installation featuring paperhangings.

Nic Hess calls his large works "installation drawings". He borrows his motifs from art history as well as from everyday life. Through application a variety of techniques, he blends, overlaps, enlarges and contorts pictures and symbols sourced from global communication culture to create larger-than-life collages. In this process, the walls of the exhibition space act as his canvases. Although he arms himself with sketches and drawings in readiness for the various architectural rooms, what really defines his modus operandi is his direct and spontaneous interaction with each of these spatial situations. This approach has resulted in some outstanding installation drawings in, for instance, Munich's Haus der Kunst and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

The Grieder Contemporary exhibition finds Nic Hess in dialogue with the gallery's polygonal exhibition space. The motifs he has gone for in this key installation stem partly from the world of cartography, partly from personal experiences accrued as a result of journeys and sojourns. Born in Greater Zurich, his career so far has taken him to a variety of urban centres including Amsterdam, Los Angeles and London, and to countries such as Tibet, Mexico, the USA and China. The title of the exhibition, Agglobal, reflects this dynamic through its conflation of the words agglomeration and global. Visitors to the exhibition will be encouraged to shift their gaze up and down between these focus points in a setting reminiscent of the game Snakes and Ladders. The world is spread out like a giant playing field.

In an allusion to the Agglobal concept, the gallery presents a large-format drawing of London that logs, in a rather muted way, all the streets and places visited by Hess on his visits to this cosmopolitan metropolis. The result is a highly personal street map of the British capital. Inviting the visitor to examine the installation more closely, the work at the entrance of the gallery features arches on the wall made from countless business cards collected by Nic Hess. The office at the rear of the gallery contains further drawings and collages offering insights into the artist's smaller-scale work. Rounding out the exhibition are a stuffed fawn and an installation incorporating several hundred chessmen.

Works by Nic Hess (*1968 in Zurich) have been shown in numerous galleries and museums in Switzerland and abroad. His works are to be found in private as well as corporate collections. 2012 will find him completing an installation project destined for the facade of the new Swiss Institute in New York's Wooster Street. He will also be taking part this year in a group exhibition curated by Patrick Charpenel at Mexico's Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO).

Image: Nic Hess: Kontakte, 2012
Tapete, Grösse variabel
Courtesy Grieder Contemporary, Zürich

Opening: 2 February 2012 - 18:00

Grieder Contemporary Projects
Mommsenstrasse 56 - Berlin
Fri/Sat 2 - 6 pm, and by prior arrangement

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