Beat Zoderer in 2011

‘Still abstraction’
24.02. - 19.03.2011

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Beat Zoderer, born in Zürich in 1955, has been classified as a Concrete artist – yet, in many respects, he is the exact opposite. He de-constructs and revitalises Concrete and Constructive Art by subtly undercutting its severity, rationality and perfectionism.

Zoderer’s drawings, images, sculptures and installations have been presented by some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, like the ‘Haus Konstruktiv’ in Zurich, Switzerland, ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, Museum Bolzano, Italy, Kunstverein Ulm, Germany, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, to mention a few.

Zoderer’s ability to design installations that suit a specific space expresses, first and foremost, his predilection for a radical mixture of art and everyday objects. It is a mixture that he also achieves in his images which, at first sight, often appear to be strictly geometrical and systematically structured. On closer inspection, however, he has used completely unexpected materials: from office and storage supplies, folders, adhesive tape, foam strips and the like, Zoderer generates complex, multi-colored worlds that frequently appear to be a critically ironic reflection of the Concrete artists’ “Materialgerechtigkeit” (truth to materials). Far removed from strictly self-reflective art that lays claim to purity of form and purity of colour, Zoderer’s art is uninhibited and fearless: it recoils neither from cheap materials nor from a radically free treatment of art’s highly charged issues – form, colour, space, meaning. Zoderer’s works achieve their striking effect through a powerful sensual appeal and their subtle intellectual invitation to mistrust a conventional view of things.

Beat Zoderer shows with DOMINIK MERSCH GALLERY for the second time here in Australia. He is an artist-in-residency and has created a site-specific installation in the gallery for the exhibition.