The Biel artist Edi Aschwanden (b. 1957) creates objects and images oscillating between functionality and the imagination. For his exhibition at Kunsthaus CentrePasquArt Aschwanden has conceived each room differently, thus presenting the main aspects of his work – the relationship between surface and volume, the metamorphosis of everyday objects or the aesthetic of disorder – by means of several media and techniques.

The exhibition opens with a series of large format bitumen drawings representing objects with a sculptural character, created by the superimposition of lines and the weight of the material. This to-and-fro between material, image, function and space challenges our perception. It is also present in other works such as the modular installation composed of objects made of painted wood distributed over a surface, evoking architectural models and thus creating an ensemble that is painterly as well as three-dimensional.

Edi Aschwanden’s interest in the conceptual gap that exists between reality and illusion is also evident in an installation that is a (re)construction of dismantled building parts that present the interior of an uninhabitable house. Operating in a similar way are a wooden structure and a photograph, placed opposite each other, where the artist’s head conceals the view from us. On the other hand, unconventional photographs of hands converge several realities and thus, typical for the artist’s work, cause confusion or even discomfort. Although a certain sense of humour runs through the artist’s practice, it is to be found particularly in the series « Strategies for Survival » where each combination is composed of objects whose meaning or function mutually cancel each other out and create new ways of reflecting on the world around us. The collages of interior photographs disorientate us, turning gravity upside down and playing with our senses.

Alongside his teaching activity at the School of Graphic Design in Biel, Edi Aschwanden has developed an autonomous and significant artistic practice. For his exhibition at CentrePasquArt – his first solo show – he is presenting his work « after inventory », consisting of new pieces and re-cycled earlier works, thereby allowing us to enter into his poetic and irrational universe.