Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil
Stefan Banz
Olivier Blanckart
Etienne Bossut
Olaf Breuning
Roderick Buchanan
Christoph Büchel
Patrick Corillon
Simone Decker
Jeremy Deller
Daniel Firman
Jean-Damien Fleury
Peter Garfield
Ulrike Gruber
Fabrice Gygi
Alexander Gyoerfi
Jens Haaning
Eric Hattan
Lori Hersberger
Henrik Plenge Jakobsen
Surasi Kusolwong
Peter Land
Abigail Lane
Lang/Baumann
Mathieu Mercier
Thom Merrick
Jonathan Monk
Olivier Mosset
Gianni Motti
Daniel Pflumm
Philippe Ramette
Relax
Christian Robert-Tissot
Daniel Ruggiero
Roman Signer
Nika Spalinger
Uri Tzaig
Erwin Wurm
Dana Wyse
Marc-Olivier Wahler
Art in the city space. Thirty-nine artists (Europe, USA, Thailand) have been invited to work in the urban setting. They sneak into the city's infrastructures and question art's ability to work its way into our everyday lives. TRANSFERT is the 10th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition to be held in Bienne. The first exhibition in this series - a pioneering one in its determination to show art in the public place - dates back to 1954, the last one to 1991.
THE EVENT: ART SNEAKS INTO THE CITY
TRANSFERT - art in the city space. Thirty-nine artists
(Europe, USA, Thailand) have been invited to work in the
urban setting. They sneak into the city's infrastructures and
question art's ability to work its way into our everyday lives.
TRANSFERT is the 10th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition to be
held in Bienne. The first exhibition in this series - a
pioneering one in its determination to show art in the public
place - dates back to 1954, the last one to 1991.
This major show is under the patronage of a committee
made up of personalities like Ruth Dreifuss, Moritz
Leuenberer, Yvette Jaggi, Herzog & de Meuron, Simon de
Pury, etc.
A voluminous, 480-page catalogue (Engl./Ger./Fr.) is being
published to accompany the exhibition.
PLACE
Bienne, in the city centre.
Perimeter bounded by the Place Centrale, Place Guisan
and the Conference Centre.
(A poster programme produced by four international artists
will be simultaneously on view in the following streets;
Basel, Berlin, Bern, Bienne, Dijon, Genève, Hamburg,
London, Neuchâtel and Paris).
OPENING HOURS
Daily round the clock (except for shop opening hours for
certain works).
THE ARTISTS
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil (F), Stefan Banz (CH), Olivier
Blanckart (F), Etienne Bossut (F), Olaf Breuning (CH),
Roderick Buchanan (SCO), Christoph Büchel (CH), Patrick
Corillon (B), Simone Decker (LUX), Jeremy Deller (GB),
Daniel Firman (F), Jean-Damien Fleury (CH), Peter
Garfield (USA), Ulrike Gruber (D), Fabrice Gygi (CH),
Alexander Gyoerfi (D), Jens Haaning (DAN), Eric Hattan
(CH), Lori Hersberger (CH), Henrik Plenge Jakobsen
(DAN), Surasi Kusolwong (THAI), Peter Land (DAN),
Abigail Lane (GB), Lang/Baumann (CH), Mathieu Mercier
(F), Thom Merrick (USA), Jonathan Monk (GB), Olivier
Mosset (CH), Gianni Motti (I), Daniel Pflumm (D), Philippe
Ramette (F), Relax (CH), Christian Robert-Tissot (CH),
Daniel Ruggiero (I), Roman Signer (CH), Nika Spalinger
(CH), Uri Tzaig (ISR), Erwin Wurm (A), Dana Wyse (CAN).
DIRECTOR
Marc-Olivier Wahler
(artistic director of the CAN Neuchâtel Art Centre; art
critic).
THE GRAFT
TRANSFERT focuses on the concepts of graft and
injection, over and above the idea of addition and
supplement. Thus the artists proposes a prevailing
consideration of the city’s existing infrastructures (roofs,
balustrades, street lamps, tarmac, shops, façades,
posters, vehicles, ventilation ducts, newspapers, TV, etc)
with the keen desire to push the logical systems behind
each infrastructure to their uttermost, not to say absurd,
limits. Some artists, to give an example, propose a fire
scheduled to happen three times a day, a sneezing
dustbin, choreographies performed by bikers, hints for
making products vanish, and hints for camouflage in one’s
own home, an Angst tree, a security zone for the
Conference Centre, a dam for the Suze canal, ventilation
ducts for a motorway tunnel, a robot for tossing bread to
birds, giant aquaria, a space for the future, an unbearable
Jazz Band playing the loveliest music in the world, pills for
turning blond, Protestant or artist... Present-day art is no
longer set facing the world the better to study and describe
it. It sneaks inside the world, plying the host of networks
being woven by our reality day in day out. It operates more
within a logic of movement and speed than in a logic of
representation. By distorting the rules of visibility, today’s
artists are formulating an actual aesthetics of stealth.
THE ZONE
Paying particular attention to the exhibition concept,
TRANSFERT delimits a zone lying between three major
geographical points, and, through a dynamic system of
linkages, encourages a dialogue between the works and
consequently between the works and their context of
inclusion. The work is no longer on its own vis-Ã -vis the
city. Visitors no longer scour the streets in search of the
works. They find themselves at the hub of a zone scanned
by space-time phenomena that are forever changing.
A visit to an exhibition is not approached the same way as
a walk in the city. A fluctuation is inevitably created
between the state of mind suited to the discovery of an
exhibition and the state of mind that we experience on a
daily basis when we walk around a city. This constant
fluctuation is essential here. Above all else, it represents a
vehicle of energy. While artistic practices are handled
through their user value, it is crucial to introduce them into
the very place of exchange and energy represented by the
city.
THE CATALOGUE
Artists' references are no longer drawn from an art system,
which, by its very self-legitimising and tautological nature,
has managed to offer a rest area, an offshore platform
where the din of the world is broken down into a rustling
sound, adjusted like conditioned air. Their references are
urban. They are organized within the flows which
criss-cross streets, outskirts and passages. The 480-page
exhibition catalogue (Engl./Ger./Fr.) encompasses this
state of affairs. In addition to the usual information about
the works and the exhibition, the catalogue proposes
reference systems formulated in the form of a personal
pantheon by the TRANSFERT artists and subsequently
developed by authors such as Martin Conrads (Ger),
Joshua Decter (USA), Jean-Charles Masséra (F), Olivier
Mosset (CH), Frank Perrin (F) and Marc-Olivier Wahler
(CH).
Adresse
TRANSFERT
A. Schöni-Strasse 40, C.P. 3521
CH-2500 Biel-Bienne 3
tel. +41 (0)32 322 3120
tel. +41 (0)32 724 0160
fax +41 (0)32 724 0171