Augustin Rebetez | 1/9UNOSUNOVE
A Winter Window
Curated by Adelina von Fürstenberg
11 dec 2019 – 08 feb 2020
The installations by Augustin Rebetez (Delémont, Switzerland, 1986) – through various creative processes and their staging between real, symbolic and imaginary – allow the emergence of the artwork with a specific purpose: to develop a representation through a narrative and a plot, likely to create a relationship between the individual and the collective, between the architecture of space and the dynamic perception of the viewer. From his installations – which graze the absurd and especially, from where a twilight romanticism, dear to the surrealists, emerges – one leaves with a mixed feeling of fascination and unease. Strange beings, indescribable figures, gothic creatures haunt his artistic universe.
A Winter Window, the young Swiss artist’s first solo show in Rome, is a must-see. The works exhibited strike firstly for the variety of the artistic languages used: photos, sculptures, paintings, graffiti and video animations; different materials and techniques that Augustin Rebetez uses to describe his vision of the human condition. His works are compose with dysfunctional objects, humans without gender, in totemic positions and fantastic animals, magical and disturbing atmospheres at the same time that activate the imagination of the viewer and overturn the traditional vision of the reality making a visceral and direct relationship between the work and its observer. This aim is achieved both with poetic, softer and sensible works as you can see in the first room, and with dark, dynamic and explosive works that instead prevail in the second room.
“His exhibitions are a narrative and visual construction, a heterogeneous installation, an experience. Visitors are enchanted by his work and, when they leave the show, most of the time they carry this feeling with them for a while”. Adelina von Fürstenberg.
Augustin Rebetez, born in 1986 in Delémont, in the Canton of Jura, located in the north-west part of Switzerland, lives and works in a small village, Mervelier, where he uses his house as a studio and artists residence. His solo show at the Rencontres de la photographie in Arles in 2011 marked a turning point in his career, as did the 2014 Sydney Biennale. In the same year, he received the Vevey’s Grand Prix Images. In 2016, he exhibited at the Tinguely Museum in Basel and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Locle. In 2018, he made three different theatrical performances for the Théâtre Vidy in Lausanne, and a video for Art for the World, Liquid Panic, in the context of the traveling project AQUA. The same year, during the photography festival Images Vevey, he made a series of twelve stop-motion short films with the director and clown Martin Zimmermann, entitled The Adventures of Mr. Skeleton (wwww. Mrskeleton.ch). Augustin Rebetez solo exhibitions took place at the Beirut station, Lebanon, and at the Naruyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan. He has participated in several group exhibitions: the fourth Independent Animation Biennial in Shenzhen, China, Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear (Again), La Rada, Locarno, Switzerland, Cahiers d’Artistes, National Center of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, Russia where he is currently in artist residency. In 2019, he is working with Adelina von Fürstenberg who curate the solo show Estremecer Auroras at SESC Consolaçao, Sâo Paulo, a part of which will be presented in September at the Assab One in Milano. In November 2019, he participated at Cuarnavaca in Mexic at the space Tallera with the exhibition Fin del Futuro. During the artbasel 2019, he received an award for being among the best young Swiss artists from the Federal Office of Culture. Currently, he is working on a theatre show at Théâte du Vidy in Losanna, for which the preview is January 29, 2020.
Adelina von Fürstenberg is among the first European curators to show an active interest in non-Western artists, thus establishing a multicultural approach to art. With her unique vision, she has presented art in spaces such as monasteries, medersas, large public buildings, squares, islands, and parks. Furthermore, her activity has opened up opportunities for dialogue between contemporary art and social issues in a wider context. Adelina von Fürstenberg is the founder and first director of the Geneva Contemporary Art Center. Later she has been director of Le Magasin at the National Center for Contemporary Art in Grenoble and of the school for curators. She is the founder and current president of Art for The World. In 2016 she received the Meret Oppenheim Art Grand Prize, awarded by the Federal Office of Culture of the Swiss Confederation, and in 2015 the Golden Lion for the best national participation of the National Pavilion of Armenia at the 56th Venice Biennale, where she was awarded a Special Jury Mention of the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993, for the direction of the School of Curators of Le Magasin – Center National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble. Adelina von Fürstenberg is also a producer of short movies. Since 2008, she has produced more than forty of them. In 2008, the series Stories on Human Rights was recognized by the Council of Europe as “the most innovative Cultural Event in Europe in 2008”. In 2019 he produced Interdependence, a film composed of eleven short films on the Environment and Climate Change together with eleven directors including Bettina Oberli, N.M. Panda, Shahrbanoo Sadat, Silvio Soldini and Daniela Thomas presented in World Premiere at the Film Festival last October.
