Yves Netzhammer. A Refuge for Drawbacks 05 November 2010 - 27 February 2011
Between Revelation and Nightmare
After having participated in numerous exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad, Yves Netzhammer is now being presented by the Kunstmuseum Bern in a large solo exhibition dedicated to the unique work of this Swiss media and installation artist. Two spectacular installations filling entire rooms will be shown with videos and objects conceived by the artist especially for the exhibition. Yves Netzhammer’s works revolve around questions concerning identity and the relationship of people to their environment in our present information age.
Born in 1970 in Schaffhausen and now living in Zürich, Yves Netzhammer
has won all important Swiss art awards. In 2009, the GegenwART
foundation purchased the installation Subjectivization of Repetition: Project B / Subjektivierung der Wiederholung. Projekt B (2007). This artwork can be viewed since May 2010 and for the next five years to come. It laid the foundations for a closer investigation and
interpretation of Yves Netzhammer’s exceptional artwork.
Walk-in Gesamtkunstwerk
Besides the just-mentioned installation, the artist has now created a further installation. This additional work with the title The Refuge for Drawbacks extends throughout an entire room, totally transforming the space
within the old 19th-century Kunstmuseum Bern building. Visitors can
access the walk-in installation just as they can in the case of The Subjectivation of Repetition: Project B (2007), finding themselves confronted with an aesthetic experience somewhere between revelation and nightmare.
Netzhammer has composed an upside-down Alpine panorama in blue and black on the walls. 2.5 meters-long curtains partition the room, parting and
drawn as if orchestrated by spectral hands. Constantly new views of
seemingly surreal objects are opened up with ceaselessly varying
compositional structures. The artist integrates computer-generated
animation films in his installations and enhances them with Bernd
Schurer’s sound tracks. In the midst of digital worlds, Netzhammer’s
cosmos unfolds as a Gesamtkunstwerk comprising images, objects, sound,
and movement.
A World without Certainties
Yves Netzhammer not only engages with the relationship of humankind to nature and between
different cultures, but also with problems we encounter in establishing
our identity in face of the increasing flood of global information in
our everyday world.
Viewers are drawn into an imaginary world of animation films, computer
drawings, and bizarre objects by reflections or projections within the
installation space of Netzhammer’s works. In the artist’s universe,
basic laws – like the purpose of objects – have lost their validity and
all certainties have disappeared. With growing frequency, we ask
ourselves to what extent is self-certainty something transient and
dependent on perception alone. Arcane and downright uncanny objects,
wall paintings, and videos conjure up a world that is practically devoid of anything familiar to us. Again and again prejudices guiding our
pictorial thinking are questioned and pressing problems in our lives are formulated anew in a unique way.Thus we can comprehend Netzhammer's installations also as critique of
civilization and careful deliberation on the situation of society today.
