Kilian Rüthemann
14 April - 28 May 2011
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| © Kilian Rüthemann
Ohne Titel, 2011
white concrete
800 x 360 x 30 cm |
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KILIAN RÜTHEMANN
Target as Frontside
14 April - 28 May, 2011
RaebervonStenglin is proud to present Target as Frontside, an exhibition
of new work by Kilian Rüthemann. The Swiss artist makes sculptures
using simple substances such as salt, sugar, bitumen or cement,
interacting these with the fabric of the building that support them —
the walls and floor of a gallery, its steps, windows and lighting, for
instance — to form architectural interventions that alter the function
of their known ingredients, allowing structural properties to expound
their own logic.
Rüthemann’s works are frequently made in situ, directly responding to
the environment they will be shown in and lasting no longer than the
duration of their exhibition. Each is the embodiment of a single act
whose forthrightness combines elegance with absurdity. Despite their
strict formalism and structural experimentation the nature of his
inquiry is philosophical, its results poetic. Past works include
skylights reconfigured to form a giant X formation running from ceiling
to floor (X, 2009, Kunsthaus Glarus); a segment of a gallery’s parquet
floor lifted and laid next to the hole it had left to form two side by
side arrows, pointing to something made out of nothing (Untitled, 2009);
and crosses drawn in cement across each of a gallery’s walls at
Kunstmuseum Basel, (Untitled, 2010) — the ragged unevenness of the
action contrasting with the conceptual purity of the gesture, whilst
simultaneously damaging and drawing attention to the museum’s
architecture.
Target as Frontside takes its title from a text by the electronic music
composer and theorist Dick Raaijmakers, whose scientific yet poetic
thought experiments profoundly influence Rüthemann’s work. The phrase
comes from Raaijmakers 1984 work METHOD and summarises an attempt to
understand the way in which humans interact with the world through their
use of tools, arriving at the conclusion that the person who ‘moves’ a
thing or thought toward a ‘target’ can only ever see it from its
frontside, for ‘… it will turn with him and follow him constantly with
its frontside: like a lion following the hunter with his head.’ The
works at RaebervonStenglin explore this relationship between movement
and agency, allowing simple actions to invoke narratives of dissolution
and decay thus testifying to the transience of all things. Two ‘sheets’
of white cement will lie on top of each other in the front room of the
gallery, their exact dimensions relaxed into a soft formation due to the
ways in which they have been released from their casts. In the back
gallery another work will present approximately 180 fluorescent bulbs
affixed to a wall and then smashed, forming an incandescent monument to
fragility. Through their use of individual components to create injured
shapes, such works convey the delicacy of relationships, sublimating
functionality into feeling.
Kilian Rüthemann was born in St. Gallen in 1979. He studied stone
sculpting at Zuzwil, St. Gallen (1997–2001) and Fine Arts and Media Art
at Academy of Art and Design, Basel (2002–2005). His solo exhibitions
include Walking Distance, Künstlerhaus Bremen (2010); Attacca, Manor
Kunstpreis Basel, Museum fur Gegenwartskunst Basel (2010); Double Rich,
Instituto Svizzero di Roma (2009); and Sooner Rather than Later,
Kunsthaus Glarus (2009). His numerous group exhibitions include
Displaced Fracures, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2010); 5.
Berlin Biennale für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2008); and Poor
Thing, Kunsthalle Basel (2007).
www.raebervonstenglin.com
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