Pax reloaded: part one

The Bickel Museum at Walenstadt, Switzerland, invited a group of artists to realize an artwork from Oct.,5 to Nov,18 of the current year. The proposed subject was "future - yesterday and today" .

Karl Bickel, founder of the Bickel Museum, was a Swiss sculptor of 20th century, who settled in the mountains overlooking the lake of Walen. He erected there with his own hands the "Paxmal" , a big stone monument calling for peace.

My artwork aimed at the Bickel Museum consists of an inflatable sculpture made of pvc, measuring 12/16/12 feet. It makes a reference to Bickels intention of synthesis of positive human spirit, transferring the work from the static stonework to an airy form which reflects the change of times. On the sidewalls I' ve printed different religious and political symbols. Bickel covered his walls with mosaicked pictures which represent the human spirit and its aspiration. With my printed symbols I' m referring to a contemporary discourse about religion and politics and their influence on human life.

This Project was created during my one year stay in India and was first showed at the Sumukha gallery, Bangalore. My directed European view with which I had initially captured different colours and fragrances, chaos and unknown has changed, and other, unexpected views have developed. Suddenly, I' ve paid attention to the intervening spaces, which have opened up in the Bangalorean urban areas. Empty places are for the time being rare, and appear as fast overgrown with slum huts, filled with waste materials and new commercial buildings. Encroachment becomes a familiar concept, as it is used for many self-expanding activities in the constantly growing daily city life and also meant as the illegal spreading of new dimensions in an existing structure. The bamboo scaffolds, which precariously clasp the new buildings and serve as frames for new constructions, fascinate me. This stark constructions, which seem fragil and absolutely bricoliert, include on the other hand a very rhythmic structuring, which gives an impression of stability and rationality. For this exhibition, I' ve built a bamboo scaffold in a precarious manner and put red and blue light tubes on the bamboo sticks. Thus evoking an Indian night mood. I' ve also sculpted a big eye, named as "Encroaching Eye" , which refers to the directed view and the encroaching ideas of my Indian experiences.

I have presented this work for the first time in a sculpture exhibition on a science college area in Wohlen, Switzerland. A wood construction of dimension 16' /9' /16' feet built in precarious manner is the support and casing for two pieces of work which are suspended and one fixed on the stage.

The installation, put up in the precincts of the science classroom of the college, questions the design/development of the concept of sexuality of mammals. It intends to analyze our language, which is our intermediary for all understanding and recognition, for its biased content. This is because in English, French and Italian, the mammals are connoted in a very noticeably sexual manner by the significants Mammal, Mamifères and Mammiferos.

With its inscribed motherliness, the work treads on a dialog, and opens up the arena of conflict.

I sculpted "Hysterias" in summer 2005 for a sculpture exhibition in the psychiatric clinic in Munsterlingen, Switzerland. The figures stretch their limbs ecstatically and exalted and freeze in gorgeous poses. The models for this work were the photos of the female patients of the psychiatric clinic Salpêtrière in Paris in the 19th century. These women, who were made to pose in these peculiar positions by the leading doctor Charcot in his passion for development of medicine, obliged willingly and passionately. They served as a show of feminine expression to makers of images and as an idea for hysteria, and have kept psychoanalysis busy till today with this theme.

Contains works of various work cycles, which deal with the topic of sexuality and the gender aspect in the social context. It mostly consists of couples that look stoically at the landscape and seldom get involved in conflicts. Under this, now and then appear men on their own and also clubbed in groups, women in twosomes and children alone. I have been working on this theme since 1994.

In the year 1991, I had designed a commemorative work in the context of the unsustainable situation on the Zurich Platzspitz, worldwide called "Needle Park" , titled "Fixer" . It was carved in crystalline marble and measures 10' /2.5' /2.5' feet. The sculpture had been put up on the occasion of a demonstration in autumn 1991 on the Zurich Platzspitz, and had in turn caused quite a sensation. On the suggestion of the cultural advisory committee of the princely Liechtenstein Government, the figure had been placed in Vaduz in 1993, and there too it gave reason for great excitement. It has been removed multiple times and at last placed in a landfill site, whereafter it received temporary asylum by a retired Liechtenstein frontier guard. Subsequently, a private collector from Winterthur purchased the sculpture and in 2003, loaned it to ARUD, an organization who provides the safe using of drugs, to place it briefly again on the Zurich Platzspitz as part of their 10th anniversary celebration. Today, the Fixer stands in a private park in Winterthur.