Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen

Alexandra Bachzetsis (lives and works in Zurich/CH) views the conceptual and physical form of the human body both as a medium and as a process or substance. In doing so, the artist draws on the vocabulary of ‹pop-cultural› and commercial media such as film or advertising, as well as moments from the history of art, theater and choreography, which she simultaneously stages but also critically deconstructs.

At the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen,Bachzetsis will present her newwork Notebook, which will beshown as a performance and videoinstallation. The project is aradical re-examination with herown biography as a dancer,choreographer and artist. Thepiece resulted from a dialogicalmethod developed by Bachzetsisespecially for this project. Thecollaboration with the projectpartners is evident in thediverse encounters that take theform of material and immaterialtraces, voices and remnants.Themes such as lust, sexuality,excess, innocence, pain and transience are negotiated in the formof performative notes that manifest themselves in a plurality ofvoices, images, bodies and objects. The notebook as anindispensable companion to the artistic process, as a privatearchive of creative work and a medium for storing ideas forimagined future projects is a reflection of Bachzetsis` artisticaffinity for the fragmentary and sketch-like in creative andperformative thought processes.

The exhibition at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen presentsBachzetsis` latest performance and at the same time embeds it inthe artist`s multifaceted oeuvre, which takes shape in ephemeralmoments and actions as well as documentary, written and multimedialanguages of form. Through an idiosyncratic mixture of danceelements, performative strategies and self-recording practices,the body becomes a corporeal archive, the most subversive form ofpresentation of experience and the site of constant agency betweenpast and present, occurrence and documentation, liveness andmediality.

At the opening weekend (31.3. & 1.4.2023) the performance Notebookwill celebrate its premiere. The performance Perfect will be shownduring the opening on Friday and at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday.

ALEXANDRA BACHZETSIS lives and works in Zurich.Solo exhibitions/projects (selection): «2020: Obscene», exhibitionversion, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich/CH (2022); «2020: Obscene»,theatre version, Gessnerallee, Zurich/CH (2021); Chasing a Ghost(2019-ongoing); Mudam, Luxembourg/LU (2020); «An Ideal forLiving», Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris/FR (2018); Escape Act(2018), Pact Zollverein, Essen/DE (2018); Massacre: Variations ona Theme (2017), MoMA, New York/US (2017); From A to B via C,Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam/NL (2013 & 2015); From A to B via C,Tate Modern, London/UK (2014); «Show», Kunsthalle Basel, Basel/CH(2008). Group exhibitions (selection): «Amaze me», Muzeum Susch,Susch/CH (2023); Private: Wear a mask when you talk to me (2016)und Private Song (2017), High Line Art, New York/US (2018);documenta 14, Athens/GR and Kassel/DE (2016/17); The Biennial ofMoving Images 2014, Geneva/CH (2014); documenta 13, Kassel/DE(2012); 5th Berlin Biennale, Berlin/DE (2008).