LORI HERSBERGER
ZOMBIE VOYAGER NO 1

6 OCTOBER – 17 NOVEMBER 2007
OPENING: SATURDAY, 6 OCTOBER 2007, 7 PM

“Painting used to be the result of a verifiable dramatic act that the artist forced himself to, whereas now that the medium has been embedded in history and the artist has become a part of everyday life, this is only partly credible.”
Lori Hersberger, 2005

With the exhibition Zombie Voyager No 1, we will present new paintings on acrylic glass mirrors as well as a monumental installation made of neon, broken mirrors, and metal barrels by the artist Lori Hersberger, who was born in 1964 in Basle. Moreover, we will exhibit Hersberger’s new collage cycle for the first time.

From 1991 to 1995, Hersberger studied at Schule für Gestaltung in Basle and now lives and works in Zurich and Berlin. After he initially took part in important group exhibitions from the mid-nineties on, including Balloon Frame at Kunsthalle Basle (1995), Freie Sicht aufs Mittelmeer at Kunsthaus Zurich and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (1998), or Nonchalance Revisited at Akademie der Künste Berlin (1999), Lori Hersberger created the trademark of the 1999 Venice biennial, curated by Harald Szeemann, with his large-scale installation made of floating second-hand carpets. That sparked off his international exhibition activity which culminated in a solo exhibition at Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basle in 2001 as well as the extensive solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Zurich (2003) and Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe (2004). As for the recent past, Hersberger’s participation in the exhibitions Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht at ZKM Karlsruhe (2006), Une Question de Generation at Musée d’Art Contemporain Lyon (2007), and Brave Lonesome Cowboy at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen should be mentioned. The House of Art in Budweis held a solo exhibition for Hersberger under the title Beautiful Occupation (2007).

Apart from performances, installations, and neon works, painting is another focal point in the oeuvre of Lori Hersberger.

Lori Hersberger’s style of painting sometimes seems to be a persiflage towards the noble demand of abstract expressionists; with its markedly inorganic materiality and the way it is developed, it is deliberately artificial. “He calls his compositions on canvas anti-landscapes himself. They have no direct reference to real nature. They are fragmented fields of vision, discordant and highly energetic. […] He does not intend an anti-compositional all-over, but sets highlights in a targeted manner. The eye dives into fluctuating levels, wanders across furrowed colour sediments, floats on toxic pink spray mist” (Gianni Jetzer).

During the Venice Biennale in 1999 Hersberger, who started out with video art and sculpture during his studies, announced that he would switch to painting, but the materials neon, video, and plastic were never to disappear from his work. “Overcoming a certain feeling of diffidence towards a personal romanticism or an own style was an important step in this process” (Lori Hersberger).

Reacting sensitively to the given space will be essential in Zombie Voyager No. 1. “For Lori Hersberger, art is always a three-dimensional event—both in a mental and in an architectural sense. The artist ultimately considers the dimension of space the true opportunity, especially for painting. Therefore, for him, the edge of a picture only delineates it to a certain degree. Again and again, the colours of his installations break out of the four sides of the picture and occupy the surrounding walls. They appear as garishly challenging soloists, but mysteriously remain connected. The mirrors Lori Hersberger has recently been using more often in his work play an important role here. By skilfully arranging them in the room, the reflection of the fragmented individual parts suddenly forms a surprising overall picture. Depending on the position and perspective of the viewer, it is continuously reconstituted” (Mirjam Varadinis).