The multifaceted installations of frölicher I bietenhader (Selina Frölicher & Micha Bietenhader, CH *1985) are characterised by a complex as well as intelligent approach to different spatial conditions and media. For their first institutional solo exhibition the young Swiss artists have made an imposing multimedia installation across a number of spaces which allows the microcosm of the immediate environment to penetrate the museum.Months before the opening of the exhibition frölicher I bietenhader already took the first pictures of the architecture as well as the flora and fauna in the vicinity of the CentrePasquArt. They are interested above all in the microcosm: tiny buds just before blossoming, root formations, bugs and spider webs or traces of chalk on the facade of the building that are barely visible to the naked eye. Partly furnished with the more or less discrete addition of „foreign“ (architectonic) elements, these shots are continually built on, in order to serve eventually as raw material for the installation.

The images are then worked up, estranged from the original or left as they are and shown on projectors, flat screens or monitors of all makes and ages. The walls and floors of the galleries become a drawing pad for the moving images and digital cut-outs. Reproduced in typical or atypical formats, with a temporal shift between a place elsewhere and the projection, the images of the external world are somehow visible everywhere but can nowhere be completely recorded. Elements from outside reappear within the installation in the same or a different form. The sculptural quality of the equipment, cables and other hardware becomes an integral part of the carousel of images. In combination with the architectonic games of illusion that are created by the recording or projection of the « foreign » elements, an all-encompassing whole is produced that only at first sight appears chaotic. In reality the apparent confusion is thought through in minute detail. If the visitor takes the time needed, it suddenly becomes apparent that the images are connected in a mutual game of exchange and the cable hanging apparently carelessly from the ceiling has been placed just as intelligently and carefully as the form and intensity of the shadows.

When entering an installation of frölicher I bietenhader, it is possible to feel overpowered at first by the wealth of sensual stimuli. This irritation is absolutely intentional and to some extent part of the concept of the artist duo’s many-sided practice in which the possibilities and limitations of various media on the one hand and of perception on the other are exploited. frölicher I bietenhader work site-specifically, whereby not only the exhibition space is integrated in the concept but also the surrounding exterior space. After a careful inspection of the locality a basic concept is in each case worked up in the studio; the rest is created on site. In a variety of ways and by means of photography, projections, live web cams and other analogue and digital media, the artist duo succeeds in disrupting space-time continuities and showing the viewer their highly individual interpretation of the world.

With the generous support of 

Curator of the exhibition: Irène Zdoroveac