René Fahrni and Dominik His

30 June - 18 July 2012

Opening: Friday 29 Juni 2012 7pm

Curated by Anca Sinpalean

Opening hours: Mo 10 - 5 pm, Wed and Fr 4 - 7 pm

“What architectural element(s) inspire you as an artist?” This was the question addressed to René Fahrni and Dominik His at the beginning of this project. The first artist responded with works that challenge our spatial perception and experimented with the horizontal plane as essential to any built structure. The latter imagined an absurd architecture in the absence of a coherent plan and functionality. They both ended up working in the realm of what we can call “absent architecture”, imagining architecturally “incorrect” structures to the point of dislocating them all together and reducing them to a mark in the sand. 

Why invite artists to think about architecture, do you ask? The advantage of their different view on architecture is to free us from the formal clichés in which architecture often imprisons us. We might discover something fresh in these “architecturally incorrect” models and artistic experiments, which work with the basic spatial elements like the horizontal plane or the wall and with basic architectural notions like matter and idea, heavy and light, earth and heaven, carrying and being carried.