Opening: February 1st, 2019

Reto Pulfer’s large-scale textile works transform and divide the room into three-dimensional walk-in landscapes of archaic architecture such as grottos, caverns and chambers. The artist playfully samples methods of visualisation for various (inner) states and conditions, translating them into three-dimensional forms or employing them as a basis for his performances and idiosyncratic sonic compositions.
Pulfer utilises simple, everyday materials and modified found-objects to construct new arrangements. Often these objects appear strangely anachronistic, as if they were archaeological findings from a lost civilisation, albeit with a clearly identifiable contemporary reference.

Recurring elements, characters and terms from Reto Pulfer’s multi-dimensional work appear to tie in to the larger narrative of his novel, Dschinagewächse. In it, the hybrid-being Dschina – half plant, half human – is subjected to constant change and adaptation because of an increasingly inhospitable environment. Despite a constant state of becoming and these already fully-embodied selves, Dschina is surprised to find themself again and again in situations which remind them of the lost capabilities of these earlier ‘versions’. And so Dschina takes to searching for a self-determined form of them and their kind.

For the exhibition Der hausende Zustand (lit. English, The Housed Condition), Pulfer combines old works, selected dra-wings from the “Dschina-Series” and place-specific textile works with new elements from a repository of cages and traps which the artist discovered in his new country home. The temporary housing of captured wild birds in the context of an exhibition opens itself to new interpretations and insights in The Housed Condition which take aim at the conventional understanding of ‘home’, instead claiming it as a type of wild and peculiar seizure of space.
The meaning of ‘housing’ most significantly reveals itself as the paradoxical (human) desire for protection and freedom – and, thereby, exposure. The Housed Condition not only implies this paradoxical desire, but also the urge to arrange and self-determine one‘s living space.

– Words by Sarah Bernauer –

Opening: February 1st, 2019

Reto Pulfer’s large-scale textile works transform and divide the room into three-dimensional walk-in landscapes of archaic architecture such as grottos, caverns and chambers. The artist playfully samples methods of visualisation for various (inner) states and conditions, translating them into three-dimensional forms or employing them as a basis for his performances and idiosyncratic sonic compositions. Pulfer utilises simple, everyday materials and modified found-objects to construct new arrangements. Often these objects appear strangely anachronistic, as if they were archaeological findings from a lost civilisation, albeit with a clearly identifiable contemporary reference.

Recurring elements, characters and terms from Reto Pulfer’s multi-dimensional work appear to tie in to the larger narrative of his novel, Dschinagewächse. In it, the hybrid-being Dschina – half plant, half human – is subjected to constant change and adaptation because of an increasingly inhospitable environment. Despite a constant state of becoming and these already fully-embodied selves, Dschina is surprised to find themself again and again in situations which remind them of the lost capabilities of these earlier ‘versions’. And so Dschina takes to searching for a self-determined form of them and their kind.

For the exhibition Der hausende Zustand (lit. English, The Dwelling Condition), Pulfer combines old works, selected drawings from the “Dschina-Series” and place-specific textile works with new elements from a repository of cages and traps which the artist discovered in his new country home.
The temporary housing of captured wild birds in the context of an exhibition opens itself to new interpretations and insights in The Dwelling Condition which take aim at the conventional understanding of ‘home’, instead claiming it as a type of wild and peculiar seizure of space.
The meaning of ‘housing’ most significantly reveals itself as the paradoxical (human) desire for protection and freedom – and, thereby, exposure.
The Dwelling Condition not only implies this paradoxical desire, but also the urge to arrange and self-determine one‘s living space.

(Words by Sarah Bernauer)