Reto Pulfer
22 Nov - 21 Dec 2013
RETO PULFER
Die Gelassenheit Einer Entscheidung (The Placidity of a Choice)
22 November - 21 December 2013
We are pleased to announce our first solo show by Reto Pulfer.
With his large-scale installations, Reto Pulfer rubs against the institutional, rigid format of the gallery that he inhabits with voluminous fabric habitats, objects, sofas, sound and smells. Recently, he has been moving into the open, making works and experiences that forge with their environment. As a point of departure it can be said that Pulfer’s work investigates various conditions of mutability. His choice of material is therefore all that is flexible and malleable, such as hand-dyed and hand-sewn fabrics, recycled bed sheets and old clothes, paper, wood and clay. By means of various installation and performance strategies, Pulfer extends the boundaries of painting into the exhibition space in order to create a tableaux that you can walk around, be part of and enveloped by.
A play between visual elements and words is a key component in Pulfer’s work, where he often points to and uses the ancient method of the mnemonic or memory routine, with which a speaker can retain ideas and gain knowledge through memorable images. With equally weighted reference to the avant-garde of modernism and to the culture of the amateur, Pulfer emphasises the idea of the rehearsal as an entity and questions the fixity of classifications, such as inability, failure and workmanship.
In Pulfer’s new environment Entscheidungshaus or House of Choice , a tent like structure is stretched out across the room using coloured ribbons that connect and hang the tent in the space. Attached to the ribbons are small ceramics and overalls, made by the artist and available for the audience to wear . The overalls and the tent are made from the same stretchable and semi-transparent, undyed cotton fabric. A tableaux made out of pieces of green cloth and ink painted fabric has been sewn onto the back wall of the tent. In the House of Choice visitors are presented with the option to put on an overall to synthesize with the installation as well as to participate with others already in costume. The costume holds the potential for the audience to become a performer, but also to be camouflaged by the material of the tent. A soundtrack of guitar music, made by the artist whilst wearing the costume, fills the room.
The House of Choice installation is juxtaposed by an installation of smaller textile wall pieces on self-build wooden stretchers, paper drawings, ceramics as well as ink painted fabrics that hang in a salon style manner in the smaller rooms of the gallery. Made during Pulfer’s five months residency earlier this year in Nürnberg, they can be seen as documents, diaries and experiments that were previously exhibited at Kunstverein Nürnberg as part of his 2013 solo show Zustand der Intensivierung (A state of Intensification). The installation includes a sofa, aiming to provide an atmosphere of relaxation.
Pulfer is interested in how people receive, act and experience his work. He makes architecture and environments that are impermanent and unstable, but that can also be pleasant for the audience. Reto Pulfer (b. 1981, Bern, Switzerland) lives in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include: Kunsverein Nürnberg (2013), The Swiss Institute, New York (2013), Balice Hertling, Paris (2012), Instituto Svizzero, Milan (2011), Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome (2011), Kunstverein Arnsberg (2009), Wartesaal, Zurich (2009).
Group exhibitions include: Chat Jet, Kunstlerhaus Graz (2013), Allez-y, R4, Ile Seguin, Paris (2012), Hotavangardehothot, OSLO10, Munchenstein/Basel (2011/2012), Wunder, Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2011), Animism, Kunsthalle Bern (2010).
Die Gelassenheit Einer Entscheidung (The Placidity of a Choice)
22 November - 21 December 2013
We are pleased to announce our first solo show by Reto Pulfer.
With his large-scale installations, Reto Pulfer rubs against the institutional, rigid format of the gallery that he inhabits with voluminous fabric habitats, objects, sofas, sound and smells. Recently, he has been moving into the open, making works and experiences that forge with their environment. As a point of departure it can be said that Pulfer’s work investigates various conditions of mutability. His choice of material is therefore all that is flexible and malleable, such as hand-dyed and hand-sewn fabrics, recycled bed sheets and old clothes, paper, wood and clay. By means of various installation and performance strategies, Pulfer extends the boundaries of painting into the exhibition space in order to create a tableaux that you can walk around, be part of and enveloped by.
A play between visual elements and words is a key component in Pulfer’s work, where he often points to and uses the ancient method of the mnemonic or memory routine, with which a speaker can retain ideas and gain knowledge through memorable images. With equally weighted reference to the avant-garde of modernism and to the culture of the amateur, Pulfer emphasises the idea of the rehearsal as an entity and questions the fixity of classifications, such as inability, failure and workmanship.
In Pulfer’s new environment Entscheidungshaus or House of Choice , a tent like structure is stretched out across the room using coloured ribbons that connect and hang the tent in the space. Attached to the ribbons are small ceramics and overalls, made by the artist and available for the audience to wear . The overalls and the tent are made from the same stretchable and semi-transparent, undyed cotton fabric. A tableaux made out of pieces of green cloth and ink painted fabric has been sewn onto the back wall of the tent. In the House of Choice visitors are presented with the option to put on an overall to synthesize with the installation as well as to participate with others already in costume. The costume holds the potential for the audience to become a performer, but also to be camouflaged by the material of the tent. A soundtrack of guitar music, made by the artist whilst wearing the costume, fills the room.
The House of Choice installation is juxtaposed by an installation of smaller textile wall pieces on self-build wooden stretchers, paper drawings, ceramics as well as ink painted fabrics that hang in a salon style manner in the smaller rooms of the gallery. Made during Pulfer’s five months residency earlier this year in Nürnberg, they can be seen as documents, diaries and experiments that were previously exhibited at Kunstverein Nürnberg as part of his 2013 solo show Zustand der Intensivierung (A state of Intensification). The installation includes a sofa, aiming to provide an atmosphere of relaxation.
Pulfer is interested in how people receive, act and experience his work. He makes architecture and environments that are impermanent and unstable, but that can also be pleasant for the audience. Reto Pulfer (b. 1981, Bern, Switzerland) lives in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include: Kunsverein Nürnberg (2013), The Swiss Institute, New York (2013), Balice Hertling, Paris (2012), Instituto Svizzero, Milan (2011), Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome (2011), Kunstverein Arnsberg (2009), Wartesaal, Zurich (2009).
Group exhibitions include: Chat Jet, Kunstlerhaus Graz (2013), Allez-y, R4, Ile Seguin, Paris (2012), Hotavangardehothot, OSLO10, Munchenstein/Basel (2011/2012), Wunder, Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2011), Animism, Kunsthalle Bern (2010).