In this large-scale solo exhibition, the Kunstmuseum Solothurn becomes a white drawing pad for Yves Netzhammer (*1970): a continuous narrative unfolds from room to room using different motifs and media. Meanwhile, the artist continues to develop his unmistakable visual language, with which he has made a name for himself internationally.
Netzhammer's multifaceted practice is based on drawing, which plays an important role in the Solothurn collection. He draws on the medium's long tradition as a surface for projection and reflection and brings it into the technological and socio-political present. True to the artist's working method, this exhibition project was also created purely situationally. At the center of his Solothurn presentation are wall drawings, which are the setting for multimedia installations and, in the dramaturgical finale, advance to a room-filling panoramic presentation. In seven rooms, divided into poetic chapters, beginning with "Leaves are questions of the air", an associative network of images opens up. In the exhibition, the artist creates a bracket around image, body, space and imagination to entangle us in a dialog that is as sensual as it is intellectual.
Exhibition view Yves Netzhammer, photo David Abi
In two new animated drawing films, the line unfolds its inexhaustible potential: it mutates into an outline, a surface, a volume, a body - only to transform itself anew. The artist's sign language thrives on the metamorphic and surreal: an iPhone emerges from a slice of bread, the human body becomes an animal body, the tender embrace becomes a painful entanglement. The reduction to the essential enhances the impact of the figures; their stylization makes them ideal stand-ins for a wide variety of viewers. The artist's visual world reflects reflections on art-historical genres such as landscape, history and portrait painting, as well as changing collective and individual identities.
January 21 to May 12, 2024
