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Zora Berweger

Greeting the Unseen

Kunsthalle

Intro

The oeuvre of Zora Ber­weger (*1981 in Bern, CH, lives and works in Leipzig, DE) in­cludes paint­ing, draw­ing, ceram­ics, in­stall­a­tion, sculp­ture, pho­to­graphy and light. Her mul­ti­me­dia works draw on a vocab­u­lary of basic geo­met­ric shapes, ar­cha­ic-look­ing ob­jects and design bor­rowed from nature.  

Using min­im­al means and care­fully chosen ma­ter­i­als, Ber­weger stages her works as spa­tial in­stall­a­tions. She first ex­am­ines the ex­hib­i­tion site closely as if it were a pictori­al space and then ex­per­i­ments with scale, con­stel­la­tions and dis­place­ments while jux­ta­pos­ing dif­fer­ent media. Pe­cu­li­ar fea­tures of volumes, sur­faces and ma­ter­i­al­ity unite with the per­cep­tion of light and col­our to lend her works an altered pres­ence.

In­spired by the spa­tial con­di­tions at the Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell, Ber­weger has ori­ented her work on the fig­ure of a plant. She fo­cuses here on func­tions, po­ten­tials and tasks of dif­fer­ent plant parts to cre­ate com­bin­a­tions that in­vari­ably refer to some­thing un­seen or con­cealed. While the root sys­tem, anchored in the earth and thus largely hid­den from view, serves as the artist’s sub­stant­ive and form­al start­ing point on the ground floor, she equates the cent­ral gal­lery with the core part of a plant, where nu­tri­ents are bundled and forces flow to­geth­er. The up­per­most space then holds mani­fest­a­tions of the plant with­in our own at­mo­sphere as well as its con­nec­tion to the great­er cos­mos.

The single light signs of the neon in­stall­a­tion Roots (2023), cre­ated es­pe­cially for the ex­hib­i­tion, to­geth­er form a kind of lu­min­ous root sys­tem. The neon bod­ies speak a re­duced form­al lan­guage and evoke mul­tiple as­so­ci­ations: they may re­call ty­po­graph­ic ele­ments, writ­ten char­ac­ters from past cul­tures, pos­sibly hiero­glyph­ics, sym­bols, an­ten­nae, tree branches or the simplest of tools. Roots refers to com­mu­nic­a­tion sys­tems, for ex­ample those of plants, which are in con­tact with each other through their roots, not only ex­chan­ging in­form­a­tion but also listen­ing and hear­ing.

Room 1

Calluna vulgarisKutschera, L., Lichtenegger, E., Wurzelatlas mitteleuropaeischer Gruenlandpflanzen, Volume  2 / 1: Pteridophyta und Dicotyledoneae, Stuttgart / Jena / New York, Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1992, p. 851

Calluna vulgaris
Kutschera, L., Lichtenegger, E., Wurzelatlas mitteleuropaeischer Gruenlandpflanzen, Volume  2 / 1: Pteridophyta und Dicotyledoneae, Stuttgart / Jena / New York, Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1992, p. 851

SG In the ex­hib­i­tion Greet­ing the Un­seen, you cre­ate a con­cep­tu­al ref­er­ence to a grow­ing plant. How do your work and the ex­hib­i­tion re­late to this image?

ZB A few years ago, through a friend, I came across a di­git­al archive of old draw­ings of root sys­tems. I was in­stantly fas­cin­ated and moved by it. The fact that the largest part of a plant often re­mains hid­den from our eyes, and the beauty that is re­vealed once you can per­ceive the en­tire (phys­ic­al) nature of a plant, is made evid­ent by these draw­ings. At the same time, they render per­cept­ible the in­ter­play between these areas, between these polar zones – which one might call for ex­ample vis­ible versus hid­den, light versus dark, up­ward- versus down­ward-striv­ing, etc. 
When I re­ceived the in­vit­a­tion to do this ex­hib­i­tion and had a look at the gal­ler­ies, these draw­ings of root sys­tems un­ex­pec­tedly came to mind. They over­lapped with the im­pres­sions of the Kun­sthalle’s ar­chi­tec­ture, the three su­per­im­posed rooms. 

SG What mean­ing does the ex­hib­i­tion title Greet­ing the Un­seen have
for you?

ZB The title ex­presses an inner at­ti­tude from which my works spring – and prob­ably many other things in my life as well. It is this in­terest, or joy, in look­ing be­hind things, call­ing out into the depths or vast­ness and per­ceiv­ing and listen­ing to what is there with all the senses at my dis­pos­al. In this case, “Greet­ing” means sol­emnly align­ing one­self with some­thing, open­ing one­self up to it and listen­ing. Be­cause the greet­ing is usu­ally re­turned. “The Un­seen” refers just as much to the subtle ma­ter­i­al realms as it does to the simply un­noticed re­gions, to that which is hid­den or phys­ic­ally in­ac­cess­ible to us. 

Sketch of the light signs of Roots (2023)

Sketch of the light signs of Roots (2023)

SG A cent­ral work that marks the be­gin­ning of the ex­hib­i­tion is Roots (2023). How did the neon in­stall­a­tion come about?

ZB The start­ing point was the ex­hib­i­tion space it­self and the vis­ion of ded­ic­at­ing this space to the root sys­tem and to the realms with­in the earth. The idea of doing a neon in­stall­a­tion came to me in such a flash that I can hardly ex­plain it. It was all of a sud­den just per­fectly clear, both the me­di­um and the grace­ful­ness of the forms. Then the pro­cess of im­ple­ment­a­tion began, in­clud­ing – in ad­di­tion to all the tech­nic­al con­sid­er­a­tions – draw­ing, se­lect­ing and co­ordin­at­ing the in­di­vidu­al con­tours. The me­di­um of light makes a lot of sense to me here. For ex­ample, the mo­tion of greet­ing also car­ries light with­in; it is like send­ing out a beam of light. Then again, as I listen to the an­swers, mul­tiple lights emerge from the earth, such as the min­er­al king­dom throw­ing sparks back at me. Com­mu­nic­a­tion in and of it­self could also be con­sidered an ex­change of light.

ohne Titel (evolve), 2019Neon, Edition 3 + 1AP / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

ohne Titel (evolve), 2019
Neon, Edition 3 + 1AP / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

SG Light is a ma­ter­i­al that re­curs again and again in your prac­tice. How does work­ing with light dif­fer from work­ing with other ma­ter­i­als?

ZB On the one hand, the ac­tu­al ma­ter­i­als play a role – glass, cables, trans­formers. Neon light brings some­thing in­dus­tri­al, smooth, cool, tech­nic­al into play. I find that to be a be­ne­fi­cial and im­port­ant ad­di­tion or ex­ten­sion to my work. This is also the case with the design, which is con­di­tioned by the me­di­um: the clar­ity of lines, their em­blem­at­ic ef­fect. The fact that I com­mis­sion the fab­ric­a­tion ex­tern­ally also makes a big dif­fer­ence to me. 
And then there is the light it­self, the ef­fect of the me­di­um, which in turn has an al­most con­trary im­pact to what has just been de­scribed. It has an ex­pans­ive ef­fect, is im­ma­ter­i­al in nature. It tran­scends the bound­ar­ies of sur­face and space, form and form­less­ness. Seen from this per­spect­ive, it takes on an enorm­ously uni­fy­ing role in sev­er­al re­spects. At the same time, it can also be per­ceived as other-worldly, dis­con­nec­ted from real­ity. There is some­thing ex­cit­ing about this os­cil­la­tion. I also find light ex­cit­ing in terms of col­our, be­cause it makes col­our vis­ible to our phys­ic­al eyes in a way that can be ex­per­i­enced in­tern­ally.

Room 2

grounding, 2016Acrylic, bamboo sticks, plaster, glass, coconut fibre, oil, papier mâché, salt dough, impact metal, filling compound

grounding, 2016
Acrylic, bamboo sticks, plaster, glass, coconut fibre, oil, papier mâché, salt dough, impact metal, filling compound

SG The spaces in which you show your work are vital to your artist­ic ex­plor­a­tion. What is your ap­proach to a new ex­hib­i­tion pro­ject?

ZB Be­fore I start a new ex­hib­i­tion pro­ject or even a new work, I al­ways listen with­in. I ask my­self ques­tions about it and see what comes up. There are im­pulses I sense, they ex­pand from with­in my­self, guid­ing me and fi­nally be­com­ing form. In many cases, my mind’s eye already sees, for ex­ample, a spe­cif­ic sculp­ture or ma­ter­i­al, but some­times it is more like an inner know­ledge that guides me through the pro­cess of cre­ation like a scent. And at other times some­thing pops up that I can al­ways ques­tion later on in the pro­cess; a kind of com­pan­ion. I find this a very ef­fi­cient and yet free way to work. Be­cause I feel very quickly and clearly where the focus lies, what the es­sence is, where things are going, but without con­trolling the ac­tu­al cre­ation of the work too much. So there is still a lot of room for me­an­der­ing, in close ex­change with col­our, form and ma­ter­i­al – which is very im­port­ant to me. 

SG You have a strong in­terest in ma­ter­i­als and con­tin­ue to learn new tech­niques, en­abling you to pro­duce pieces with ma­ter­i­als you have not worked with be­fore. How im­port­ant is it for you to study the ma­ter­i­al and the ex­e­cu­tion tech­nique? 

ZB I usu­ally let my­self be guided by an idea and then try to find the ma­ter­i­al and me­di­um that comes closest to it. In this way, I often come across ma­ter­i­als and meth­ods that are new to me. This can be quite un­com­fort­able at times, be­cause it puts me in the po­s­i­tion of a total be­gin­ner. And yet this be­gin­ner­’s clue­less­ness has great power. Some­times it’s like a wind of free­dom and ex­per­i­ment­a­tion is blow­ing. In this ex­hib­i­tion, my di­verse works meet up; they res­on­ate to­geth­er in a way that can be ex­per­i­enced. I am par­tic­u­larly look­ing for­ward to that. 

ohne Titel (green heart), 2019Bast, wire, plaster, pigment / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

ohne Titel (green heart), 2019
Bast, wire, plaster, pigment / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

SG What strikes me about your work is how you deal with frag­ment­a­tion. We en­counter in­di­vidu­al, re­duced ele­ments that rep­res­ent pre­cise ar­range­ments in space. What is your in­terest in the frag­ment?

ZB I think there are dif­fer­ent appro-aches here. If you de­tach in­di­vidu­al frag­ments and give them enough space, they can sud­denly com­mu­nic­ate in a way that is usu­ally hardly pos­sible for them, and the view­ers have the op­por­tun­ity to really listen to them. That’s what in­terests me. It is a love for their vari­ous out­ward ap­pear­ances. When I con­tem­plate spa­tial ar­range­ments of frag­ments, it seems to me that the in­di­vidu­al things are fully present and that their in­ter­play, com­bined with the wan­der­ing gaze of the view­ers, res­ults in a subtle dance – like dif­fer­ent lights that briefly flash in uni­son or suc­ces­sion or over­lap­ping, fad­ing out and then flash­ing again.

snake, transforming (8 trigrams), 2023Acrylic, papier mâché on aluminium dibond

snake, transforming (8 trigrams), 2023
Acrylic, papier mâché on aluminium dibond

SG You have pro­duced two large re­liefs for the ex­hib­i­tion: snake, trans­form­ing (8 tri­grams) and wales, con­nect­ing (8 tri­grams) (both 2023). They re­mind me of mys­ter­i­ous mo­tifs, signs and im­ages from ex­tinct civil­isa­tions, such as the Inca, Maya and Aztecs. While in other works form­al as­pects stand out in re­la­tion to space, or phe­nom­ena of the world around us mani­fest them­selves on the sur­faces, here a sym­bol­ism can be dis­cerned. How do you deal with sign sys­tems in your work?

ZB I guess my ap­proach is rather un­con­ven­tion­al. For me, sym­bols and signs are not so very dif­fer­ent from other forms. What in­terests me is to per­ceive the es­sence or the un­der­ly­ing force. I un­der­stand signs and sym­bols as an im­me­di­ate ex­pres­sion of a cer­tain piece of in­form­a­tion, some­thing that can be “read” – be it con­sciously or sub­con­sciously. Of course, there are dif­fer­ences in terms of im­pact; not all signs are equally clear or bundled. Some bear the stamp of a par­tic­u­lar cul­ture, and how things are re­ceived also forms an im­port­ant com­pon­ent. Nev­er­the­less, sym­bols con­vey some­thing uni­ver­sal and can thus be dis­tin­guished from in­di­vidu­al­ised mani­fest­a­tions. I value this in my work be­cause they em­phas­ise the in­ter­con­nec­ted­ness of all life. 

SG Next to the re­liefs we see a new sculp­ture that looks like a hill. What cre­at­ive and pro­duc­tion pro­cesses were in­volved in this work? 

ZB Breath­ing, cata­lys­ing (2023) is a work, which is ded­ic­ated to the theme of the centre. In the plant image this cor­res­ponds to the tuber or the trans­ition to the stem; in hu­mans one could speak of the ab­dom­in­al area or also the heart. It is the place of bund­ling, where everything flows to­geth­er, where heav­en and earth meet and po­lar­it­ies in­ter­act, and where the al­chemy, the trans­form­a­tion takes place. I knew that I wanted to put some­thing right in the centre of this middle space. Some­thing that em­phas­ises both the centre and the in­teri­or, this pool of fer­ment­a­tion. That was the basic im­petus for this work.

SG What role does nature play in your art?

ZB It re­veals it­self in vari­ous as­pects. On the one hand, I use nature to nour­ish and re­charge my­self. And then there is the feel­ing for me that my works do not ex­clus­ively ad­dress people but that they def­in­itely also con­nect and com­mu­nic­ate with the earth, min­er­als, the an­im­al and plant king­doms. In this sense, I also feel very con­nec­ted to nature through mak­ing art and dur­ing the cre­at­ive pro­cess. In nature I sense some­thing primev­al, some­thing that does not strive to be any­thing, but simply is. This no­tion has a strong at­trac­tion for me. I like to think – even if we are con­di­tioned dif­fer­ently – that we hu­mans are part of nature.

Room 3

water bodies, 2021 Epoxy resin, plaster, rubber, styrofoam

water bodies, 2021
 Epoxy resin, plaster, rubber, styrofoam

SG In your work you cre­ate ob­jects that refer to fa­mil­i­ar things from the world around us and yet are re­duced to sym­bols so that they re­main dis­tanced or in­tan­gible. I’m think­ing here, for ex­ample, of water bod­ies (2021). What cri­ter­ia af­fect your de­cision about which ele­ments to bring to­geth­er? 

ZB Some­thing that fas­cin­ates me is the geo­metry that un­der­lies all out­ward forms. For me, these very es­sen­tial shapes, such as the straight line, the arc, the sphere, the tri­angle, the right angle, etc., exude a prim­al power that re­minds me of the ori­gin and also the co­he­sion of all life. At the same time, there is this in­cred­ible vari­ety of ap­pear­ances, each one highly spe­cif­ic. A don­key, for ex­ample, has a dif­fer­ent air than a snail and makes a dif­fer­ent im­pres­sion. I’ve never really thought about it this way be­fore, but I sup­pose I often bring things from the world all around us into my works that ex­press both of these as­pects.

SG The im­ages in the series Cat’s Traces (2022) are so true to life as to be al­most de­cept­ive, look­ing like real spa­tial in­stall­a­tions. What in­terests you about present­ing spa­tial ar­range­ments pho­to­graph­ic­ally?

ZB At best, I view my work, es­pe­cially the in­stall­a­tions, from a space of si­lence. Si­lence al­lows me to be open, free and empty and en­ables me to con­nect with things, to take them in. Often, how­ever, the spa­tial, local con­di­tions are not ideal for this – let alone my own in­tern­al state of mind. In ad­di­tion, I have no­ticed that for some people it be­comes even more dif­fi­cult to find this place of si­lence as soon as their own body, and thus move­ment, enters into a re­la­tion­ship with a work of art. That’s how I be­came in­ter­ested in staged pho­to­graphy. I was curi­ous to see what pho­to­graphy could do in terms of si­lence. Be­cause pho­to­graphy is cap­able of car­ry­ing space with­in it­self, in a frozen or ri­gidly defined way. The ob­server­’s per­spect­ive is also pre­de­ter­mined. So these are spe­cif­ic con­di­tions in­her­ent to the me­di­um of pho­to­graphy that make it pos­sible to gaze into this si­lent space. It is pos­sible that view­ers will be at­trac­ted by this space, drawn into it – or that the si­lence will ex­tend into the phys­ic­al space. 

SG As you have said, an ex­hib­i­tion view­ing is not only de­term­ined by mat­ter and space but also by the view­er­’s own body in re­la­tion to the ele­ments. How im­port­ant is the human body to you? 

ZB The human body is im­port­ant to me in many re­spects. On the one hand, it can be un­der­stood as solid mat­ter, just like a paint­ing, a sculp­ture, a plant, the plan­et Earth, like all the rough mani­fest­a­tions of ma­ter­i­al. It is just as mani­fest in form, col­our, tex­ture. I find it ex­cit­ing to per­ceive with and through the body what a work of art can bring forth. In par­tic­u­lar in my in­stall­a­tions, I think that the re­la­tion to the body is ele­ment­ary and eas­ily ac­cess­ible. The body is ad­dressed dir­ectly, not ne­ces­sar­ily as a fel­low play­er, and is in­vited to fol­low the game and its ef­fects up close.

ohne Titel (nature), 2023Oil, sand, filler on canvas / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

ohne Titel (nature), 2023
Oil, sand, filler on canvas / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

SG You ori­gin­ally made paint­ings but have since worked in a vari­ety of media. What role does paint­ing still play in your work?

ZB If I only knew! Well, I sus­pect that in fu­ture I will in­creas­ingly find my way back to paint­ing. In re­cent years, I’ve felt less free with paint­ing than in three-di­men­sion­al media – which was due to the pro­cess of cre­ation. Still, I sat down every now and then to paint sev­er­al small canvases, and I fin­ished one of them this year. To me, an im­port­ant way of ac­cess­ing paint­ing is def­in­itely through col­our, and I have for­tu­nately not lost this. It’s also in­ter­est­ing to see that the frag­ment­ary can be found in my paint­ings just as in my other works, but it seems to work/func­tion dif­fer­ently there some­how. It seems to me that the in­di­vidu­al frag­ments there form a kind of spa­tial field.

SG Dur­ing the ex­hib­i­tion peri­od you will offer three guided med­ita-tions – one on each floor. What can vis­it­ors ex­pect?

ZB I would like to use the ex­hib­i­tion, the in­ter­play between the works in these spaces, as well as the themes of the in­di­vidu­al floors – ba­sic­ally the en­tire at­mo­sphere cre­ated by this ex­hib­i­tion – to in­vite vis­it­ors to em­bark on inner jour­neys into realms that mostly go un­seen and are dif­fi­cult for our phys­ic­al bod­ies to ac­cess.

Bio

Zora Ber­weger (*1981 in Bern, lives and works in Leipzig, DE) is a Bernese artist with roots in the Can­ton of Ap­pen­zell. She trained as a theatre paint­er and then stud­ied tex­tile design at the Lu­cerne School of Art and Design be­fore mov­ing to Leipzig in 2006 to work as a freel­ance artist.

Ber­weger has had nu­mer­ous solo or double ex­hib­i­tions in Europe. In 2022, the artist was awar­ded the “Neustart Kul­tur” schol­ar­ship from the Stif­tung Kun­st­fonds; in 2021, a work­ing schol­ar­ship from the City of Leipzig; and in 2020 and 2013, a work grant from the Aus­ser­rhodis­che Kul­turstif­tung.

next exhibition

Impressum

CUR­AT­OR
Stefanie Gschwend

TEAM
Anna Beck-Wörner, Re­gina Brül­isauer, Stefanie Gschwend, Chris­ti­an Hörler, Chris­ti­an Meier, Claudia Reeb,
Madleina Ru­tishaus­er

EX­HIB­I­TION IN­STALL­A­TION
Chris­ti­an Hörler, Chris­ti­an Meier mit Ueli Alder, Roswitha Gobbo, Domin­ik Hull, Carina Kirsch, Nik­laus Ul­mann

MU­SEUM AT­TEND­ANTS
Raphaela Böhi, Domi­n­ique Franke, Mar­grit Gmünder, Roswitha Gobbo, Mar­grit Küng, Bar­bara Met­zger, Cristina Mosti, Madleina Ru­tishaus­er, Melanie Scher­rer

TEXT
Stefanie Gschwend

PROOFREAD­ING
Mi­chaela Alex-Eiben­stein­er

TRANS­LA­TION
Katja Nau­mann

COUR­TESY
Cour­tesy the artist
Pho­tos: Zora Ber­weger

GRAPH­IC DESIGN
Data-Orbit / Michel Egger, St.Gal­len

AC­KNOW­LEDGE­MENTS
Zora Ber­weger, Liz Craft, Paul-Aymar Morgue d’Algue, Paul Bern­ard, Laura Weber, Team Kun­sthaus Pasquart / Centre dʼédi­tion con­tem­po­raine, Genf, Fonds can­ton­al dʼart con­tem­po­rain, Geneva, Galer­ie Lo­even­bruck, Paris, MAMCO, Geneva, Swana Mourgue dʼAlgue, Neue alte Brücke, Frank­furt, Sé­bas­tien Peyret, FR,
Anne Shelton Aaron and lenders who wish to re­main an­onym­ous

ZORA BER­WEGER – GREET­ING THE UN­SEEN WAS KINDLY SUP­POR­TED BY
Stif­tung Erna und Curt Bur­gauer

Zora Berweger
Greeting the Unseen
Kunsthalle
Calluna vulgarisKutschera, L., Lichtenegger, E., Wurzelatlas mitteleuropaeischer Gruenlandpflanzen, Volume  2 / 1: Pteridophyta und Dicotyledoneae, Stuttgart / Jena / New York, Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1992, p. 851

Calluna vulgaris
Kutschera, L., Lichtenegger, E., Wurzelatlas mitteleuropaeischer Gruenlandpflanzen, Volume  2 / 1: Pteridophyta und Dicotyledoneae, Stuttgart / Jena / New York, Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1992, p. 851

Sketch of the light signs of Roots (2023)

Sketch of the light signs of Roots (2023)

ohne Titel (evolve), 2019Neon, Edition 3 + 1AP / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

ohne Titel (evolve), 2019
Neon, Edition 3 + 1AP / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

grounding, 2016Acrylic, bamboo sticks, plaster, glass, coconut fibre, oil, papier mâché, salt dough, impact metal, filling compound

grounding, 2016
Acrylic, bamboo sticks, plaster, glass, coconut fibre, oil, papier mâché, salt dough, impact metal, filling compound

ohne Titel (green heart), 2019Bast, wire, plaster, pigment / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

ohne Titel (green heart), 2019
Bast, wire, plaster, pigment / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

snake, transforming (8 trigrams), 2023Acrylic, papier mâché on aluminium dibond

snake, transforming (8 trigrams), 2023
Acrylic, papier mâché on aluminium dibond

water bodies, 2021 Epoxy resin, plaster, rubber, styrofoam

water bodies, 2021
 Epoxy resin, plaster, rubber, styrofoam

ohne Titel (nature), 2023Oil, sand, filler on canvas / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

ohne Titel (nature), 2023
Oil, sand, filler on canvas / courtesy the artist / photo: Zora Berweger

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