Valentin Hauri & Rhea Myers

Behind the exhibition “Valentin Hauri & Rhea Myers” there is a wish to engage with and present two practices that share similar attitudes and radical approaches to art-making. In the work of Swiss artist Valentin Hauri and British artist Rhea Myers one can draw interesting connections to ideas of simulacra, the hyperreal, the void, hauntology, autonomy, authenticity, identity, fluidity, the unpresentable as well as notions of power and marginality.

The exhibition pairs painting with digital art which are additionally NFTs, both referencing aesthetics that might traditionally considered excessive; Vapourwave drawing heavily upon hyper commercial signifiers such as the sounds and images of consumption (logos, advertisement jingles, computer software sounds) and art brut often described as radically “eccentric.”

Their practices are captivatingly oblique, at times disorienting in that the conceptual underpinnings and their source material is not made visually evident. Upon understanding their process of working we come to discover a transformation; heavily signified signs that you can unpack and where you can subsequently rejoice over the instability of meaning.

They are spaces that incite storytelling. It brings up the question of how such spaces are conceived in the minds of people? Arguably impacted by an individual’s relationship to advertising, the spectacle and the auratic. Their practices divert our attention to imaginative fictions and make us think about art and our relationship to reality.

Rhea Myers (born in 1973, United Kingdom) is an artist, hacker and writer. Her work places technology and culture in mutual interrogation to produce new ways of seeing the world as it unfolds around us. Myers saw the potential of blockchain art in the precedents of 1960s Conceptual art and the net.art scene of the 1990s. She has explored how both movements challenged the established aesthetics and ontology of art via new means of production, communication, and organization. She studied at Canterbury College of Art and Middlesex University’s Centre for Electronic Art. Since 2013 she has been making blockchain art and writing blockchain art theory as well as having collaborated with several organisations and companies in the blockchain space. She is currently based in British Columbia, Canada.

Her recent exhibitions include “NfTNeTArT– From Net Art to Art NFT” at Gallery Panke and Office Impart (2022); “Proof of Art” at Francisco Carolinum, Linz, Austria (2021); “Breadcrumbs: Art in the Age of NFTs” curated by Kenny Schachter at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne, Germany (2021); “Perfect & Priceless: Value Systems on the Blockchain”, curated by Georg Bak at Kate Vass Galerie (2018). One of her works “Secret Artwork (Content)”(2018) was sold at Sotheby’s New York auction in 2021. Her anthology “Proof of Work” (Blockchain Provocations 2011– 2021) is due to be released in September 2022. Published by Urbanomic it includes her pioneering blockchain art with a selection of essays, reviews and fictions.

Valentin Hauri (born 1954, Baden, Switzerland) lives and works in Zurich. He attended Franz Fedier’s painting class at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel from 1976-1980 and has lived in Zurich since 1986. In 80s and 90 he went on several residencies at Cité des Arts in Paris and Istituto Svizzero in Rome. In 1990 he received the New York Studio Residency and Grant from the City of Zurich. In 1994 he was awarded a studio scholarship in London from the Landis & Gyr Foundation. Valentin has been creating paintings alla prima, meaning without corrections/overpainting, since this residency. In 2003 he was a guest lecturer for 6 months in Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat in Bangalore, India.

In 1981 he received the Kiefer-Hablitzel Scholarship and in 1985, 1986 and in 1987 the Swiss Federal Art Scholarship. His works have been exhibited at Centre Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland; Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich, Switzerland; Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany; Helmhaus Zürich, Switzerland; Museum Sammlung Prinzhorn, Heidelberg, Germany; Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, Switzerland; Germany; Kunsthalle Palazzo Liestal Switzerland; jevouspropose, Zürich, Switzerland.

The artist states: “Over the past three decades my work has concentrated almost exclusively on the medium of oil paint on canvas. I use an assortment of source materials, various images I’ve gathered over the years; book covers, illustrations, film stills, posters, magazines, things from the internet, and, above all else, images of work by outsider artists. Each of these images designates important stages of social development for me, and thus my outlook on my time. I understand the targeted and at the same time open collection of these documents as community statements, in the broadest sense. The painting, the material, and the particular way of dealing with each subject can be clearly observed. I try not to determine things too much and work alla prima – wet into wet, spontaneously, without corrections. Things should fall like dice.”

Gallery hours Fri 3 – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 6 pm, and by appointment

Exhibition Duration 02.09. – 13.11.2022

www.lasttango.info

Location:
Last Tango
Sihlquai 274
8005 Zürich
Switzerland