Oscar Tuazon
Manuel Burgener
13 February – 25 April 2010
Helvetiaplatz 1
CH-3005 Bern
Tel.+41(0)31 350 00 40
Fax.+41(0)31 350 00 41
info [at] kunsthalle-bern.ch
According to Tuazon it is impossible to make architecture in an exhibition space because all of the problems that architecture needs to solve have already been solved: there’s already a roof overhead; a heating system; walls and a floor. But what if an artwork creates new problems for the building? What if the existing structure has to adapt, re-engineer itself, in order to accommodate the work? At Kunsthalle Bern the artist will search the limits of the building by constructing another structure inside. Being an archetypal exhibition space, Kunsthalle Bern’s empty halls are somehow still modelled after domestic space, as a kind of home enlarged and magnified (with a grand foyer, a kitchen, a dining room, a master bedroom, a children’s bedroom, a library and a guest room downstairs). Its walls are enlarged and expanded to hold paintings. It is a structure designed to house artworks—but a structure is never designed to accommodate another structure. Tuazon’s structure will put holes in the walls—all walls that have a carrying function. The piece attacks the building—this old bourgeois idea of art at home, the idea of a space for art, the idea that there could be or can be ever any space for art. And of course even despite all the effort, it fails. It fails to do anything permanent, to disrupt the single, impossible, eternal condition of an exhibition space: that it remains empty. Somehow the grand effort emphasizes that failure.
During his exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern, the first comprehensive and richly illustrated book on Tuazon’s work will be published as the result of a cooperation between Do.Pe Press and Paraguay Press, both Paris; Kunsthalle Bern, the Centre international d’art et du paysage de Vassivière and Parc Saint Léger – Centre d’art contemporain du Pougues-les-Eaux.
Oscar Tuazon, born 1978 in Seattle, Washington, USA, lives and works in Paris, France and exhibited internationally, among others at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the Seattle Art Museum, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and Dependance, Brussels.
In the lower rooms of Kunsthalle Bern the recent work of Bernese artist Manuel Burgener will be on display. Burgener plays in the simplest way with the oscillation between the disenchantment and the re-enchantment of our world. Be it sculptures, photographs or installations, his works act as both trace and signal, directing viewers to other places, at once real and imagined. It is tempting to say that the artist is creating a new visual language, but he is in fact breaking down the one we know, estranging it from us. The scale of his work often appears somewhat off, and we may feel a little too big or too small standing before it. Burgener organizes an ambiguous ‘presence’ for his objects, or rather: images. It was the French philosopher Henri Bergson who defined the image as an existence, which is more than what an idealist would call a representation, but less than what a realist would call a thing. That’s exactly where Burgener’s unpretentious works resides: as an existence halfway between a representation and a thing. Using simple materials and devices, and combining them in the most deadpan and simple compositions Burgener plays with our faculties of perception and unmasks the self-evident in elegant and light gestures. Manuel Burgener, born 1978, lives and works in Burgdorf and Bern, Switzerland.
Kunsthalle Bern
Helvetiaplatz 1
CH-3005 Bern
Tel.+41(0)31 350 00 40
Fax.+41(0)31 350 00 41
info@kunsthalle-bern.ch
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 11 am – 6 pm
Saturday/Sunday 10 am – 6 pm
Vernissage February 12, 2010, 6 pm
Press conference February 11, 2010, 11 am
