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300913: The View. Contemporary Art Space Yves Netzhammer – Old hiding places in new spaces
The View. Contemporary Art Space
Yves Netzhammer – Old hiding places in new spaces
07.07.2013 to 06.10.2013
With Yves in the bunker
By Thorsten Schneider
Military dugout, water reservoir, civil defence bunker. The need for security creates many spaces whose function it is to offer protection in a state of emergency. Mostly, these remain unused in the hope that, although they are to hand, they will never be used. But in the small Swiss village of Salenstein – not far from the Bodensee – it's different.
Known for his computer-generated video installations and living in Zurich, Yves Netzhammer shows his exhibition in The View. Contemporary Art Space: "Old hiding places in new spaces". The exhibition's title is the program. In the local fire station, the descent begins into a secret, eerie world. Enticing red, wooden steps lead in from the outside. Half way up the stairs, a floor mirror creates an aesthetic threshold. A glance inside and one loses oneself in shoals interspersed with balls of wool, scissors and knives.
One suspects the unfathomable. Inside the civil defence bunker, sterile functionality paired with constructions made of chicken wire, await one. One room is a cage; next to the bunker beds you can watch the film "Dialogischer Abrieb" (2011). A computer-animated scenario shows human-like dummies in absurd situations. Blind, deaf and dumb they collide and die like lemmings. With his trial rows of anonymous, aesthetic cruelties, Netzhammer impressively showcases failure and its transformations.
In the next room, the visitor himself steps into such a course. In flickering strobe light and threatening spherical sound, we find ourselves between measuring instruments, strings, blown up buckets and two lavatories, invited to recognize the dummies in ourselves. We run the risk of turning into a lemming. Outside, the bus for the water reservoir is waiting. Vases, little heaps of stones and hand prints in atmospheric light remind of a cult site and pre-empt the implied treasure hunt in the film "Vororte des Körpers" (2012) which is shown in the adjoining room.
Here, too, Netzhammer brings his dummies into unforeseen situations; sometimes into an upside down world, sometimes into a torturous game of deception. In front of the military dugout, the last station, there is a bench by the wayside. Somehow oddly abstract. Its wood has been deformed into a dynamic sculpture. Beside it, a damp, dripping entry leads into the dugout. An antiquated night table, a bulb – dead end. Then a junction. Finally, a sick bay. An embroidered shroud shows a body, mutilated, amputated. Behind that, the third film "Formales Gewissen" (2013) Content-related to that previously seen: knives, cuts, meat, blood. Again, paper and park benches. When one goes out into the open, the abstract bench is still in its place. But after the experience inside, it appears to be in a changed light. Fiction and fact appear distorted.
Netzhammer takes us on a mysterious odyssey to these special places with his film fragments and installations whose manifold meanings are not easily deciphered. Ideas and questions remain. It's exactly the playful easiness of what is shown which distracts and yet challenges us.
The View. Contemporary Art Space
8268 Salenstein, Fruthwilerstrasse 14
Tel: +41 71 669 19 93
E-mail: info@the-view-ch.com
www.the-view.ch.com
300913
The View. Contemporary Art Space
8268 Salenstein, Fruthwilerstrasse 14
Tel: +41 71 669 19 93
Email: info@the-view-ch.com
www.the-view.ch.com
The View. Contemporary Art Space
8268 Salenstein, Fruthwilerstrasse 14
Tel: +41 71 669 19 93
Email: info@the-view-ch.com
www.the-view.ch.com
