Everything new, Everything old.
The pandemic state that COVID has catapulted us all into has created radical change in our lives that is hard to grasp or even understand. We have been forced to come to terms with fears, losses and irrevocable changes, but how? There has been no guidance. The cultural and artistic landscape was largely forgotten, in part because it wasn’t connected to or didn’t fit with the emergency of the situation that unfolded.Many were forced to adapt in order not to starve or lose their homes. There was no money and the small emergency plans created by the institutions responsible for culture weren’t widely available. Unfortunately, all those who do not work professionally, who are not regarded as artists by the above-mentioned institutions and yet do nothing else in life… were simply forgotten. Without access, we only had Social Services for help. Well, like me and many of my colleagues, we became active after first feeling the sting of our COVID reality. Online events were created and music events were held instead at home alone. There were auctions – buy my self-made scarf and I’ll send it to you after the lockdown… Online courses like yoga, ceramics and many more were launched using digital formats. After all, we had to find a way to move forward. So our reflection of the past years since the start of the pandemic is … change, change and reinventing yourself. In my environment, I have noticed that many have adapted or even expanded their artistic work. I present five different artists (including myself) who have adapted or expanded their medium. My journey has led me to develop an offspace with the flexibility to provide area for exhibitions or art readings, etc. which will open next week. My space is located on the motorway, designed to show art to the people stuck in traffic jams and to make their short waiting time interesting. All new and yet all the same, I’m looking forward to Madrid! Finally a glimmer of hope that it might be time for us to pick up where we left off!
Marc Busse https://www.instagram.com/marc.busse/ Busse deals with reality and perception, so the artist combines visible and tactile elements on canvas and puts the material and purpose of these elements into play. Busse works with various elements from tactile floor guidance systems (ribs, grooves or knobs) that enable people with visual impairments to orientate themselves within public spaces and alert them to dangers. These floor guidance systems, as well as the practices of floor and marking colors used in barrier-free planning and building construction, are the starting point for Busse’s «floor paintings». In doing so, Busse changes the context of the control systems, but not their precise function. Everyday orientation aids become compositions where the materials and functions of these items create a visual dialogue within the picture. If we now look at this picture as the observer, our awareness experiences the same confusion that optical illusions trigger. In the moment, knowing that we are unclear, we ask ourselves what is real now. This shows us that multiple versions of reality can coexist with no hierarchy. Busse carefully points out this fleeting moment of self-awareness by means of tactile language for the visually impaired. Text by : Jordis Fellfrau
Katerina Sedy www.sedy.ch ksedy@hotmail.com https://www.instagram.com/realsedy/ I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia and the prefabricated, also brutalist buildings and urban planning there, have shaped me to this day. The quality of an environment affects human well-being. It is also said to have a healing effect. The changes that I perceive in my living environment, but also outside, often affect me as if the decision-makers were not thinking about the well-being of the population. This changes happens primarily under understandable reasons and even if I take into account all factors, it does not cancel out the reality of the users, who may have to take the environment for decades. The fact that this topic affects me in my immediate environment encourages me to deal with the changes in residential areas. In my artistic practice, I am not interested in what infrastructure or quality of life is shaped by shops and facilities. It is also not in my field of interest how the interior spaces are architecturally planned. On the other hand, I would like to understand what belongs to the construct of an atmosphere of the public place. Because the atmosphere is inextricably linked with the evaluation of it. I examine the various acoustic, haptic, and visual components of an atmosphere and would like to find out what makes the atmosphere positive or negative. I observe the components such as light, air, colors, sound, and surfaces in nature, in the city, in large squares such as small corners, in places with lots of greenery, but also underground rooms, etc. Wherever a place feels intense, I listen and look closely. Both topics often overlap in what triggers me. The media I use, photography, video, painting, digital collage, installation, and sculpture are for me a kind of catalog from which I draw depending on the concept and intention. My projects use often symbolic components from the current focus in the field of interest. Materials and surfaces, but also light and shadows in our environment influence our well-being. Regardless of where we are and whether we are aware of it. For whom are cities built, which architecture uses which materials and which houses die out, with what motivation are settlements built, how old are architectural plans, for new settlements? Which view from the window is luxury?
Rocco A. de Filippo www.roccodefilippo.ch rocco@theoff.space https://www.instagram.com/rocco.a.defilippo/ my works are snapshots of my everyday life. basically i'm only a slave of my works which impose their will on me, annoy me, mock me... so many questions and yet i cant find many answers, they only raise more and more questions. i'm surprised that i keep doing this to myself and start asking questions again and again, in order to maybe one day, perhaps ..
Olga Antonova https://www.instagram.com/olma__ Olga Antonova was born in Moscow in 1988. She lived and worked for a long time in Kyiv. From 2016 till 2018 was a part of an art collective Art-Group Light. Since 2018 she is focusing on her personal artistic practice. Olga was a nominee at Koschatzky Art-Award 2021. Currently she is doing a Master degree in Fine Arts at Zurich University of the Arts (graduating in 2022). Olga works with the following mediums: graphics on paper, paintings, sculptures, digital graphics and text. The main topic she is exploring now is loneliness, as a complex structure that consists of different feelings and emotions. She is using forms, lines, colours, their interconnectedness, relations, interactions, movements, as a metaphor for feelings, situations and for not understanding. She uses classical mediums and tries to build the bridge between formal discourse of those mediums and the “unpopular” feelings. Outside of paper each sculpture is 60x30x25cm wire, paint 2022 This time form escapes the paper. But line still goes in circles. Line goes in circles many times. It does not understand at first, that it goes in circles. But line does not know which other way to go. Line does not see clearly right now. Line is lost. Line creates forms. Forms are scary. Forms crawl on the walls. Forms crawl on the floor. Forms create fear. Fear can be overwhelming. Fear can absorb you, it doesn’t allow you to move, it has a strong grip. Lines hold on to each other. Forms look at you. Forms create confusion. You don’t see the beginning or the end of the line, sometimes you think you see, but it is a mistake. You are being mistaken. There is no actual beginning or end. All of the wires are interconnected. All of the lines are going in circles.
Alina Kopytsa (*1983, Ukraine) https://alinakopytsa.com alinakopytsa@gmail.com https://www.instagram.com/alinka_nealinka Kopytsa received her diploma in graphic arts from the National Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (2000-2006). She has been studying fine arts at Zurich University of the Arts since 2017. Gender relations, sexual behavior, and fetishism are the subjects of Alina Koptytsa’s textile colages, sculptures, and performances. Since 2011 she has participated in major international and personal artistic projects such as Twinning, Kulturgolger, Zurich, Switzerland; Intertwining, Dienstgebaude, Zurich, Switzerland; Play. Pause. Stop, The Naked Room, Kyiv, Ukraine; Biennale Ve věci umění / Matter of Art 2020 (VVUMOA) Prague; A Space of One’s Own, PinchukArtCentre Kyiv.
Featuring at the Fair with Artprints
Stefanie De Filippo Decontextualize. Reconstruct. Looking beyond the obvious, observing. Challenge to see past the distraction of the conspicuous and capture the unique. A poetic play between light and materiality, between lightness and regret. Stefanie de Filippo, born in 1979, is an artist who works mainly with photography. Observing and thematizing everyday life and commenting on everyday aesthetics, Stefanie de Filippo often creates works with creative play tactics. Play is a serious matter: different rules apply in play than in everyday life, and even everyday objects and nature undergo transformation. Her photographs are characterized by the use of everyday objects and alienated nature shots, in which recognition plays an important role. Using a poetic and often metaphorical language, de Filippo aims to enhance the viewer's sense of wonder, creating compositions or scenarios that generate quiet poetic images that leave traces and balance on the edge of recognition and alienation. Her works appear as dreamlike images where fiction and reality meet, time and memory always playing a central role. Stefanie de Filippo currently lives and works in Zurich. https://www.instagram.com/stefaniedefilippo/
Thomas Wolf works with photography and mixed media. By emphasizing aesthetics, Wolf creates an unprecedented situation with every day, recognizable elements, in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and must reconsider his biased position. His photographs do not refer to a recognizable form in the realm of dark art and are sometimes intentionally dehumanized. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning shifts and interpretive possibilities become multiple. Rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, he creates intensely personal moments that emerge through rules and omissions, acceptance, and refusal, continually luring the viewer around in circles. At times, an unsettling beauty emerges in the photographs. Moments are depicted that exist only to interrupt the human drama, to clarify our existence and find poetic meaning in everyday life. Wolf's works challenge us to renegotiate photography as part of a reactive or - sometimes - autistic medium that processes and comments on oppressive issues in our contemporary society in its own way. Thomas Wolf's diverse photographic works in the field of architecture also show his professionalism and an eye for aesthetic contrasts and materials, as in the use of steel and glass. Thomas Wolf currently lives and works in Stuttgart. „There was a pause in my life, and I asked myself, how can I combine my restricted, strictly standardized life as an architect in a wheelchair with a free spirit and give free rein to my dreams? I have always loved photography, ever since I can remember. But after my crash, I didn't enjoy glamorous beauty art anymore. The moments when the sun shines and there is no pain are precious. So, I found my way into dark art photography for gothic models, brands and bands. For me, it's important to work freely with people in places I like, and I've also noticed that my best art days are my depressed days. I am a hunter for the right moment and the right light scene, situation, and mood. This is my therapy and gives me the flow and drive for life .... and in the years of creating, I also noticed that I rise together with my somewhat fallen Dark Angel models within the work. This is fantastic." (Interview with Thomas Wolf, January 2022)
