Yves Netzhammer, Furniture of Proportions, 2008, (work in progress); rendering for animation to be included in mixed media and multi-channel color video installation with sound; Courtesy the artist and Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany; © 2008 Yves Netzhammer.
Yves Netzhammer, Installation view, Swiss Pavillion at the Giardini, 2007 Venice Biennale, Photo: A. Burger Fotografie Zürich.
Yves Netzhammer, Multimedia installation, 14.5 by 7.5 meters, for the inner courtyard of the Palazzo Strozzi. |
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Centre
for Contemporary Culture
Strozzina (CCCS)
Piazza Strozzi
+39 055 2645155
Firenze
Yves Netzhammer
April 24-July 12, 2009
This Summer the inner courtyard of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence will be transformed by an extraordinary multimedia installation by Swiss artist Yves Netzhammer. CCCS, the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, invited the artist to produce a work of art that would pay tribute to the spectacular Florentine Renaissance architecture. This is part of a project in which artists from all over the world are invited to Florence to present works of art specifically designed for the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi. The first installation was Chinese artist Wang Yu Yang’s Artificial Moon in 2008.
Yves Netzhammer, who represented Switzerland at the 2007 Venice Biennale, is celebrated for his poetic installations in 3D reflecting the human condition. For the Palazzo Strozzi he has created a multimedia installation, 14.5 by 7.5 meters, designed to mirror the Renaissance proportions of the courtyard. The work consists of a number of different elements that forge a kind of parallel world in an ongoing game of hide-and-seek with the architecture of this historic Florentine palace. The installation breathes life into a journey, a labyrinth comprising structures reminiscent of a compound, at each end of which the artist has placed shapes of animals and woodland vegetation. Here, as in his other works, the artist uses formal elements reduced to a bare minimum yet with a wealth of images and action sequences.
The visitor is encouraged to enter an architectural framework where they will encounter computerised animation typical of the artist’s style, and atmospheric sounds created by Bernd Schurer, a composer with whom Netzhammer has worked on several occasions. New shapes are generated whereby a virtual and predominantly symbolic reality comes into being, prompting reflection and dreamlike associations in the mind of the spectator who is called on to build a personal path of movement based on the relationship between seeing and understanding.
Yves Netzhammer was born in Schaffhausen in 1970 and lives in Zurich. After completing his studies in architecture and training initially as a draughtsman, he enrolled in the preparatory course at Zurich’s Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in 1990 to 1991, going on to specialise in the figurative arts from 1991 to 1995. After showing his work at personal and collective exhibitions in such important cities as Zurich, Frankfurt, Basel, Duisburg, Bremen, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Mannheim, Lucerne and others, and winning a number of major prizes and awards, Netzhammer represented Switzerland, along with Christine Streuli, at the National Pavilion in the Giardini di Castello at the most recent Venice Biennale in 2007.
Since 1997 he has produced video installations, 3D animations, drawings, paintings and other objects, using the computer to create pictures and animated film sequences that offer a poetic and evocative interpretation of the world we live in. Using an extremely concise and symbolic style, Netzhammer explores the philosophical and psychological aspects of the game of relationships between man, objects, and elements from the animal and vegetable kingdoms and the transformations that they spawn.
Recent solo exhibitions include: 2009, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Germany; 2008, San Francisco MOMA, USA; 2007, Vision|Audition, Karlskirche, Kassel, Germany (programme in support of Documenta 12); 2007; The Subjectivation of Repetition, Project B, Karlskirche, Kassel, Germany; and 2007, The Subjectivation of Repetition, Project A, Venice Biennale, Swiss Pavilion,Italy.
Yves Netzhammer, Drawing for the Swiss Pavilion Project, 2007 Venice Biennale. |
