Picknick with Altenburger after the opening. © Stefan Altenburger

Stefan Altenburger takes nothing for granted. His art can almost be likened to a kind of basic research. Unyieldingly he has kept to an enquiry about how and when art arises. The investigation has often entered a no man's land between reality and fiction.

In earlier works, Stefan Altenburger has used photo-documentation of what could easily be thought of as installations. For example we see a forsythia bush in full bloom draped in the kind of green fabric used during the renovation of building facades. These 'installations' were never intended to be art, but formally, aesthetically, there is nothing to distinguish them from what we would willingly accept as art. When the artist forces us to view them as art, the pendulum swings back again. By presenting them in a 1:1 scale the gallery space is enlarged and a feeling of reality returns.

In his recent works Stefan Altenburger has pursued the confrontation between reality and fiction one step further. In the gallery he constructs a reality, a reality that is constantly re-examined. The installation is built up and dismantled, only to be constructed once again, but this time in a new way. A course of events without a script. The process is filmed and later shown with the help of projectors and TV monitors in the gallery space as if they have been left behind at the end of the work process. Many layers of reality and fiction overlap. It is an unpredictable process with an uncertain ending. The whole process is about trying and about not always succeeding. About variations and retakes.

Stefan Altenburger was born in 1968. He lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. In recent years his work has been shown in a number of exhibitions in Europe and USA.

Helena Holmberg

This exhibition was made possible thanks to PRO HELVETIA, ARTS COUNCIL OF SWITZERLAND.


Installation view. Stefan Altenburger