Kathleen Bühler – författare

The Swiss company Baloise has a reputation among art experts, but not just as an insurance and financial services company. With its programs that support art, its collaborations with museums, and the renowned Baloise Art Prize for young artists, which is awarded at Art Basel, the company has had a lasting effect on the development of contemporary art. Less well-known up to now is the fact that, parallel to the company’s activities, it has also built a first-class art collection, which dates back to the mid-twentieth century. Since turning to contemporary art in the 1990s, the company has collected the works of notable artists. With a focus on photography and works on paper from the 1960s onward, some of the artists represented in the collection are Miriam Cahn, Simon Denny, Katharina Fritsch, Bruce Nauman, and Jeff Wall. Baloise Art is the first publication to provide a broader audience with an overview of the collection. Informative texts by prestigious authors accompany the artworks.

For three months Biel, Switzerland, hosted a special kind of sculpture. It was special not simply because it was by one of Switzerland’s most famous contemporary artists—Thomas Hirschhorn—and dedicated to one of the most prominent authors in the history of Swiss literature, Robert Walser. Beyond that, this sculpture was a redefinition of sculpture itself, because what takes on a plastic form here is not made of stone, steel, or bronze. It is society itself that helped to develop this work of art. In 2016 Thomas Hirschhorn and the curator Kathleen Bühler began doing field research in Biel, the city of Robert Walser’s birth, connecting with residents, clubs, artists, literati, and experts. This resulted in a multifaceted agenda. Every day the two offered events such as readings, walking tours, lectures, and children’s activities. All of this ultimately comprised the Robert Walser-Sculpture. Never before has an entire city been integrated into a temporary work of art in this way.

Following its successful run at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (DK) and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg (D), the major exhibition Blow-Up has now arrived in Switzerland, presented at the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Museum Franz Gertsch in Burgdorf. To mark this occasion, the comprehensive and richly illustrated catalogue of the work of Franz Gertsch is being released in both German and French editions. The volume explores Gertsch’s radical redefinition of Realism, from the legendary Medici to his meditative late paintings. It focuses on his signature “blow-up” method: the monumental enlargement of photographs, which Gertsch meticulously transferred onto canvas or wood through months of exacting labor. Featuring a comprehensive list of works, a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, and essays by esteemed authors including Tobia Bezzola, Kathleen Bühler, Florian Illies, Dora Imhof, and Ulrich Loock, this is an authoritative monograph on one of the most significant Swiss artists of our time.