Yves Netzhammer
"Inventories of Abstraction"
www.strozzina.org/inventoriesofabstraction/e_index2.html
The Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi's CCCS - Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina has asked the Swiss artist to produce a work of art designed to pay tribute to the spectacular architecture of the Florentine Renaissance
The inner courtyard of the Palazzo Strozzi in Firenze will be hosting a site-specific installation by Yves Netzhammer from 24 April to 12 July 2009.
Yves Netzhammer, celebrated for his poetic installations in 3D reflecting the human condition, has designed a multimedia installation 14.5 mt. by 7.5 mt designed to mirror the Renaissance proportions of the palace courtyard. The work consists of a number of different elements that forge a kind of parallel world in an ongoing game of hide-and-peep with the architecture of this historical Florentine palace. The installation breathes life into a journey, a labyrinth comprising structures reminiscent of a compound, at each end of which the artist has placed shapes of animals and woodland vegetation. Here too, as in his other works, the artist works with formal elements reduced to a bare minimum yet with a wealth of images and action sequences.
The compound forms an architectural framework which the visitor is urged to enter in a mood of total perception triggered by computerized animation typical of the artist's style and by atmospheric sounds created by Bernd Schnurer, a composer with whom Netzhammer has worked on several previous occasions.
New shapes generate each other to the point where a virtual and predominantly symbolic reality comes into being, prompting reflection and dreamlike associations in the mind of the spectator who is called on to build a personal path of movement based on the relationship between seeing and understanding.
This initiative is part of a project in which artists from all over the world are invited to Florence to present works of art specifically designed for the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi. The initiative kicked off with Chinese artist Wang Yu Yang's Artificial Moon in 2008
Yves Netzhammer was born in Schaffhausen in 1970 and lives in Zurich. After completing his studies in architecture and training initially as a draughtsman, he enrolled in the preparatory course at Zurich's Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in 1990 to 1991, going on to frequent its course for specialization in the figurative arts from 1991 to 1995. After showing his work at personal and collective exhibitions in such important cities as Zurich, Frankfurt, Bâle, Duisburg, Bremen, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Mannheim, Lucerne and others, and after winning a number of major prizes and awards, Netzhammer represented Switzerland, along with Christine Streuli, at the National Pavilion in the Giardini di Castello at the most recent edition of the Venice Biennale, in 2007.
Since 1997 he has produced video installations, 3D animations, drawings, paintings and other objects, using the computer to create pictures and animated film sequences that offer a poetic and evocative interpretation of the world we live in. Using an extremely concise and symbolic style, Netzhammer explores the philosophical and psychological aspects of the game of relationships between man, objects, and elements from the animal and vegetable kingdoms and the transformations that they spawn.