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Indepth Arts News:
"Didier Rittener - Storm Breeder"
2007-09-22 until 2007-12-22
attitudes - espace d'arts contemporains
Geneva, ,
CH Switzerland
attitudes - espace d'arts contemporains anticipates an extraordinary and especially rich start to the new 2007-08 season of art
events. They feature for a three-month engagement a large scale solo show devoted
to the Swiss artist Didier Rittener. Throughout the show’s run the gallery also has scheduled a series of
one-off events that include films screenings, performances, debates, a round-table discussion,
lectures and concerts.
The project that Rittener especially developed for the attitudes’ space is called Storm Breeder, a
reference to a tale of the supernatural by the American writer William Austin (“Peter Rugg, the
Missing Man” [1824-1827]). Storm Breeder is a unique work of art that takes the form of drawing
covering the whole of the gallery walls, a surface that amounts to around 425 m2.
The individual
drawings were initially done in graphite on A4 tracing paper, then scanned and patiently reworked
on the computer before being printed out and transferred using a trichloroethylene process to
long sheets of wallpaper and finally pasted directly on the walls. The result is compositions that
are by turns powerful and contemplative in which a broad range of motifs exist side by side, motifs from Renaissance painting, science-fiction movies, fleeting spots, architectural ornaments,
botanical plates, pop or minimalist art, even after images. By constantly remixing formal vocabularies that percolate up from our collective memory, Rittener creates references and cultural quotations that telescope into one another, elaborating a universal and resolutely contemporary visual language.
Although only temporarily installed on our walls, Rittener’s work will also exist as a booklet made
up of two fold-out sections in eleven parts, with an original text by Jean-Pierre Criqui and poems
by Carla Demierre, which we are publishing as part of our drawing collection. The collection, introduced this year, will also include this autumn a book of drawings by Marie Cool and Fabio
Balducci.
The evening events we’ve scheduled will enable interested visitors to discover a number of domains, including the world of animated film, with our carte blanche given to the filmmaker Zoltan
Horvath; a tale revealed by the storyteller Hans Peter Litscher in which cheese and Marcel
Duchamp get on famously; a concert-reading during which Marcelline Delbecq and Benoît
Delbecq will bring a charismatic icon of the silent movie era back to life; a debate between Jean
Perret and Claudio Pazienza over the film Scènes de chasse au sanglier (Scenes from a Wild
Boar Hunt); a labyrinthic cellar and the California desert in the extravagant films of John Bock;
uncompromising proposals for renewing architecture in Geneva; the super-image films cobbled
together in the pre-digital age by the German artist Thomas Bayrle; a choreographed concert
with songs sung “in yogurt” by compagnie 7273; a short narrative in a single sentence by Jean-
Marie Koltès declaimed by Vincent Madame and Fanny Adler; and finally Robert Smithson’s
mythic spiral by way of a lecture given by Jean-Pierre Criqui and a 16 mm screening of James
Benning’s latest film.
Developed in the form of a “season”, the dense program of events we’ve put together here opens
onto several fields of contemporary art. It’s an option we’ve consciously embraced in the hope of
breaking down barriers that separate genres, promoting encounters between individuals, and
stimulating the minds of one and all.
10 multidisciplinary events
Zoltan Horvath carte blanche – animated films, Friday 28 September
Performative Story by Hans Peter Litscher, Friday 5 October
Concert-reading by Marcelline Delbecq and Benoît Delbecq, Thursday 18 October
Jean Perret carte blanche - Visions du Réel, Friday 2 November
Films by John Bock, Friday 9 November
Architecture Ideas for Geneva – round-table discussion, Friday 16 November
Films and Talk by Thomas Bayrle, Friday 23 November
Performative Concert by compagnie 7273, Friday 30 November and Saturday 1 December
Voice Performance by Vincent Madame and Fanny Adler, Friday 7 December
Films and Talk on Robert Smithson, Friday 14 December
The events start at 8 p.m.
admission 10 CHF
reduced admission for the members of the friends of attitudes association
Curators of the exhibition and of the events :
Jean-Paul Felley & Olivier Kaeser, directors of attitudes
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