MANUEL BURGENER

Galerie Maria Bernheim is pleased to announce a solo presentation by Swiss artist, Manuel Burgener for Art Basel in Miami Beach 2016. This is the first time his work will be shown in the United States.

The project revolves around Burgener’s research into creating sculptural drawings of light. Taking what has become the classical format of the neon tube, the artist explores the opposite vision by creating not a sculpture that infuses the whole space with light, but finding a balance with light so feeble that it can be looked at intensely. Here is a precarious balance, a balance where the viewer is offput by the equilibrium of the works but also by the oscillation between the delicate and the rough.

The environment created in Miami has been conceived as an interrelated whole. The unique photogram works become sculptural through their display; directly reclining against the wall, their glass indented on one side and nearly coming out on the other, creating a double perspective. The disturbance of this effect is expanded by the endless reflections of the lights within theglass. Completing the project, Burgener has created a sculpture drawing upon his recurring formal language, a sculpture that questions the limitations and possibilities of a sculpture; a sculpture that is simultaneously a bench, a chest and perhaps a table. Like a craftsman, Burgener explores all the possibilities that these mediums allow and welcomes the accidents and chances. The works advocate his stance that it is not the context of the work, the display or the environment that gives its legitimacy to the work, it is above all the work of art itself. Here the traditional discourse of minimalism is pushed past by using its language and diverting the focus from the actual presence of the work.

Manuel Burgener (b. 1978) has exhibited internationally including solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bern (with Oscar Tuazon), Kunsthalle Sao Paolo, S.M.A.K. Ghent and Catherine Bastide Brussels. In 2017 he will have his first solo exhibition at Galerie Maria Bernheim.