"FoKus Switzerland A look at contemporary Swiss culture"
6 October – 17 December 2005
Swiss multi-disciplinary artists Fabrice Gygi, Christoph Büchel, Lang & Baumann, Renate Buser, Jean Daniel Berclaz and le Musée du Point de Vue, Renate Buser, Nic Hess, Christoph Ruitimann, Christina Benz, Nico Krebs & Taiyo Onorato, presented their works in various spaces in the city of Barcelona.
With additional Video Art Programs and a photographic intervention in the urban space and an event during the Loop Festival.
KBB organized FoKus Switzerland, a cultural project through which a total of 12 multidisciplinary Swiss artists presented their artistic proposals in 5 spaces in the city .
With this initiative, KBB expands its experience in the dissemination and promotion of contemporary art in Barcelona and becomes the organizer and focal point of a presentation of contemporary art in which institutions, private art galleries and art centers participate.
The project became a reality thanks also to the active collaboration of the galleries Ego Gallery, Galeria ADN and Galeria dels Àngels, which have included in their program exhibitions for this event. FoKus Switzerland also had the development of a photographic intervention with Renate Buser, from Basel, which was planned to be installed on a façade of a building on Passeig de la Barceloneta that in the end was not achieved.
FoKus Switzerland became the gateway to Swiss contemporary art in Barcelona and was attended by 9 of the 12 resident artists from all over Switzerland, who developed their artistic concepts through multiple disciplines and offered us, as a whole, a glimpse of the current dynamics of Swiss culture.
Among the artists who participated in the project, it is worth mentioning Lang & Baumann, two artists from Bern who work on the borders between art and interior design; Fabrice Gygi, from Geneva, with artistic proposals focused on activist themes, or Nick Hess, from Zurich, who reinterprets contemporary iconographies through the creation of a universe of his own, Cristoph Rüitimann from Zurich who, through his video installations, maintains a strong relationship with space, travels through it, invades it, thinks about it or specifically captures it and swallows it. These are just some of the names that participated in FoKus Switzerland.
In addition, on November 11, KBB presented several artistic proposals of video art and experimental cinema that were screened during the video art festival of Barcelona LOOP.
Video screening program
With DJ Hoffmain between programs and afterwards
Documentary film about the seminal exhibition curated by the late Harald Szeeman “When Attitudes Become Forms”
Courtesy Télévision Suisse Romande (c) 1969, www.tsr.ch
Total running time: 28 minutes
Selection from “Sternstunden” (SF DRS, Swiss Television)
Ulrich Fischer, Thomas Galler, Julia Kälin, Zilla Leutenegger, Muda Mathis und Sus Zwick, Max Philipp Schmid, Syl Betulius und Lorenz Merz, collectif_fact
Courtesy of the artists and Conny E. Voester
Total running time: 23minutes
Selections from the Videocompany Office For Video Art (www.videoart.ch) Roman Signer, Yan Duyvendak, COM & COM, Lutz & Guggisberg, Rudolf Steiner Courtesy of the artists and Videocompany
Total running time: 39 minutes
Fokus Switzerland is a project that has been sponsored by the Swiss Foundation for Culture (PRO HELVETIA) the Swiss Consulate in Barcelona, the Nestle Foundation for Art, the French Institute in Barcelona and several Swiss cities who together gave generous support for these events.
