Vergangene Veranstaltungen

Miriam Sturzenegger’s (*1983, CH) sculptures and installations are frequently produced on site as a reult of a longer term preoccupation with a specific space. They recall architectural elements; in their development, however, they re consistently reduced. The artistic practice of the Manor ArtAward winner is based on space creating processes and connections and can thus be read as the organisation of space, as shifting or layering.

France-Lise McGurn (b. 1983, GB) is a painter who works both on canvas, as well as directly on the walls, floors and ceilings of her exhibitions, sometimes combining the two. She draws on an archive of imagery and moving image to create figurative paintings exploring themes such as sexuality, dreams, the intimacy of city life, motherhood and nostalgic popular culture. Working intuitively, she uses swift brushstrokes and repeated marks to create loose associations about place and history.

CURRENT VIEWS ON THE 30 YEARS OF COLLECTION - Marking its 30th jubilee this year, the Kunsthaus looks back to 30 years of collecting activity, concentrating on highlights. Oriented at the beginning towards regional art, the Kunsthaus-Collection has focused for several years on works by international artists shown in an exhibition at the Kunsthaus. Today the collection numbers over 1800 works. The jubilee exhibition shows a selection and is expanded by current artists from Biel.  

As the exhibition at Kunsthaus Pasquart (18.-23.6.2020) cannot take place, the Diploma Festival MA CAP of the HKB will be hold as a digital Festival. The Diploma festival of the Masters in Contemporary Arts Practice of the High school of Arts Berne gathers works of a young and joyful experimenting generation of ambitious activists in art. The artistic thought of the graduates shows itself in different medias such as performance, video, installation, painting, literature or music and focuses on contemporary questioning.

The exhibition 2020 at Kunsthaus Pasquart had to be cancelled due to the Corona Pandemic. For this year's award of the Aeschlimann Corti-Grant, the prizewinners will each be honored individually with a video portrait. The works of the participating artists will also be presented in a video compilation.

Before the Kunsthaus extension, designed by Diener & Diener, was constructed, Daniel Zimmermann (*1966, CH), who lived and worked in Biel at the time, laid out a structural field of 10'000 wooden strips in the form and size of the ground plan. By means of a stereoscope, the ephemeral installation was captured from various perspectives: since then 3D panorama-viewers recall as a visual sign the transition to the situation before the big change.

Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978, CA) is an Afro-Canadian artist, living and working in Paris. Kiwanga’s artistic process is research-oriented, initiated by marginalised or forgotten histories and political events, which she articulates in a range of materials and media such as sculpture, installation, fabric pieces and video. The artist is preoccupated with the impact of disciplinary architecture on the human body and the research into post-colonial histories, in which truth and fiction are combined.

Organised in cooperation with the Kunstverein Biel, the intercantonal exhibition draws attention to art being made in the region. The selection of works, drawn up by a professional jury, surprises through diversity and originality and thereby creating space for new discoveries. Artists are given possibility to present their works to a large audience and visitors the chance to see these beyond the borders of the canton.

Kunsthaus Pasquart is showing work by the prize-winners of the Kiefer Hablitzel | Göhner Art Prize 2019 for artists under the age of 30. The group exhibition presents new works by Mohamed Almusibli, Natacha Donzé, Bernhard Hegglin, Roman Selim Khereddine, Nils Amadeus Lange, Sveta Mordovskaya and Valentina Triet.

Asta Gröting’s (b. 1961, D) sculptures and videos are characterised by the material transformation of the ordinary and familiar. She shows us the things that cannot normally be seen and perhaps those which we don’t want to see, whether it is the human inner ear, the emotional and physical distance between a couple or the trauma embedded in holes made by bullets in the facades of buildings in Berlin. The exhibition brings together new work with sculptures made in the 1990s.

Andrea Heller (*1975, CH) makes works on paper as well as ceramic and glass objects in which a world of fragile landscapes, associative traces and anthropomorphic hybrids unfolds. Reflecting the conditions of our environment, the Biel artist focuses on aspects such as deconstruction, instability and impermanence and produces room-sized installation that can be experienced in a variety of ways.

Within Céline Condorelli’s practice (*1974, FR/IT), scenographic elements are used to create installations, sculptures and performances, a process that shifts between art, space and architecture. She thus puts the gallery space and the conventions of making exhibitions on display, revealed to be hidden guides that condition and direct how one sees and moves within exhibition spaces. In this way the artist reveals the function of display, and asks us to reflect on notions of value, visibility, communication or manipulation.

The Diploma festival of the Master in Contemporary Arts Practice of the Bern University of the Arts brings together works by a young generation of ambitious artists keen to experiment. The artistic approach of the graduates is manifested in different media such as performance, video, installation, painting, literature or music and focuses on current issues.

The exhibition at Kunsthaus Pasquart brings together for the first time a comprehensive overview of Melanie Manchot’s (b. 1966, Germany) work responding to the landscape, community and tourism-led economic infrastructure of the Swiss mountain valley Engelberg.  It marks ten years of producing both photographic and video works relating to this alpine region, forming a sustained enquiry into our complex relationship with mountains as spaces of real and imaginary exploration of our place in the world.

The Kunsthaus Pasquart is showing the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the work of the Flemish artist Philippe Vandenberg (1952-2009, BE), in collaboration with the Hamburger Kunsthalle, where the exhibition was presented from 16.11.2018 to 24.2.2019. It is the first institutional exhibition of his work in both Switzerland and Germany. Highly acclaimed in his home country of Belgium as one of the most important artists of the last few decades, Vandenberg produced a radical and uncompromising œuvre that is just now achieving greater international acclaim. The extensive retrospective comprises some 70 paintings and 80 drawings and prints from the period 1995 to 2009.

Florian Graf (b. 1980, CH) examines in his work themes connected with architecture and landscape architecture and thus investigates the psychological and emotional impact of spaces. Via sculpture, installation, drawing, video or photography he creates moments of poetic density, in which the borders between reality and imagination are dissolved. In the garden of the Kunsthaus Florian Graf has installed three concrete sculptures, each constructed from three very different basic forms. A circle, an L-form and a jagged figure also function as the building blocks of ceramic models, a photographic work and a series of drawings. Applied in a variety of ways, these structures differ from each other in terms of their composition, size and placement and make reference to the artist’s considerations of new modular social structures. Finally, he has connected these three forms to create large-scale sculptures in aluminium, staging these spectacularly in the monumental Salle Poma. The further exhibition spaces are transformed by the artist into a living situation, in which his seemingly documentary films are presented alongside the other works. In these Graf plays his alter ego, the action artist Graphenheim, thereby parodying himself. Between conceptual logic, visionary power and subtle humour, Florian Graf examines the appropriation of bodies, role models and living spaces, creating a lively construct from imagination, materiality and temporality.

Zara Idelson’s (b. 1987, CH) approach to painting is based on intuition and direct observation as well as a clear set of parameters consisting of small-scale works and a limited palette. Texture is created through thin layers of paint, vital with brushwork over bare priming, where colour is used less to depict than to create a sense of movement. The exhibition focuses on the series of figurative paintings begun in 2017, when the artist moved to London, and reflect her curiosity for her new surroundings. Employing line drawing and intimations of detail, Idelson depicts the places and incidents she comes across in her everyday life, such as the back of a public building seen from a cycle path, underground station entrances and children’s chalk drawings on pavements. Dusky scenes of the city at night are quietly atmospheric, while a preoccupation with framing devices is evident in the frequent depiction of views from windows. Ultimately, however, these images are an exploration of the medium of painting itself.

Maija Luutonen (*1978, FI) exécute principalement ses peintures grands formats aux couleurs vives sur papier, qu’elle choisit pour son adaptabilité à toutes sortes d’expérimentations ainsi que pour la nature immatérielle des espaces «négatifs» blancs qui apparaissent à sa surface. Tirant profit de la qualité transitoire de ce matériau, elle analyse la relation entre temps et mouvement et traite ses œuvres comme un ensemble d’images en constante interaction plutôt que comme des objets accomplis et autonomes. Cette apparence inachevée est soulignée par la présentation de ses travaux tantôt appuyés contre le mur, empilés, pliés ou encore placés contre une porte ou contre une fenêtre. Réunissant couleur et lumière, en référence aussi bien à l’environnement construit qu’à la nature, Luutonen explore la possibilité de créer l’illusion d’une immersion spatiale à travers une surface plane. Elle conserve des éléments dérangeants ou laissés en suspens dans ses peintures, lesquelles restent néanmoins fascinantes et dynamiques.

Linus Baumeler, Amedeo Baumgartner, Zora Berweger, Karin Borer, Tashi Brauen, Julian Burkhard, Nicolle Bussien, Raffaella Chiara, Céline Ducrot, Marco Eberle, Carina Emery, Remy Erismann, F&D Cartier, Beat Feller, Fernando F. Fonseca, Petra Frey, Marcel Freymond, Laura Grubenmann, Niklaus Manuel Güdel, Stefan Guggisberg, Béatrice Gysin, Ronny Hardliz, Monika Loeffel, Maya Hottarek/Joelle Neuenschwander, Tamara Janes, Alexander Jaquemet, Anna Malina Jaun, Flo Kaufmann, Manuel Köchli, Lea Krebs, Jérôme Lanon, Brigitte Lustenberger, Selina Lutz, Renée Magaña, Anna Neurohr, Christina Niederberger, Pat Noser, Philip Ortelli, Laurent Perret-Gentil, Fiona Rafferty, Andrea Rickhaus, Christoph Rihs, Nora Schmidt, Julia Steiner, Reto Steiner, Strotter Inst.allation, Jonas Studer, Miriam Sturzenegger, Vera Trachsel, Matthias Wyss, Sinae Yoo, Wolfgang Zät, Zukunft_Schoch

Opening: Sat 8.9.2018, 5pm URSULA BIEMANN - DORA BUDOR - ROMAN BUXBAUM - JULIAN CHARRIÈRE - DANIEL GUSTAV CRAMER - MARTIN CREED - PETER DREHER - ELMGREEN & DRAGSET - CÉCILE B. EVANS - FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES - RODNEY GRAHAM - DAVID HORVITZ - TEHCHING HSIEH - SOPHIE JUNG - ON KAWARA - KAPWANI KIWANGA - RAGNAR KJARTANSSON - KRIS MARTIN - AGNIESZKA POLSKA - POPE.L - BARBARA PROBST - LAURE PROUVOST - PILAR QUINTEROS - RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE - SOPHY RICKETT - MIKKO RIKALA - DIETER ROTH - STÉPHANIE SAADÉ - MICHAEL SAILSTORFER - TARYN SIMON - SLAVS AND TATARS - SMUDGE STUDIO - GERNOT WIELAND - PEDRO WIRZ

Manuel Burgener’s (* 1978, CH) installations, objects and images give an impression of being unfinished and precarious. For his new installation spanning five rooms, the winner of the 2018 Manor Art Award combines video, sound and space. Armed with two mobile cameras in a remote seaside house, the artist captured the temporality and fleetingness of the present moment over a period of twenty-four hours. The duration of the project corresponds exactly to that of the video, which will run continuously throughout the exhibition.

Bharti Kher (*1969, GB, lives and works in New Delhi) exploits the drama inherent in objects, tapping into mythologies and the diverse associations of things. Her painting, sculpture and installation often incorporate bindis (a popular fashion accessory that marks a symbol of the third eye and is reclaimed by Kher as a deliberate sign of gender). She assembles, juxtaposes and transforms found objects. In stripping these of their meaning, she explores cultural misunderstandings and social codes.

Vernissage: Do 14.6.2018, 18:00 Die Diplomausstellung des Masters in Contemporary Arts Practice der Hochschule der Künste Bern ermöglicht einen Einblick in die vielseitigen Arbeitsweisen junger, aufstrebender Kunstschaffender. In Medien wie Performance, Video, Installation, Malerei, Literatur oder Musik untersuchen die Abschlussarbeiten gegenwärtige Themen und verweisen auf eine Generation, die in ihrer künstlerischen Praxis aktuellen Fragestellungen auf den Grund geht.