Christian Gonzenbach

Combining poetry and fantasy, this exhibition shows us an unexpected reality.A very important figure of the Swiss contemporary art scene, Christian Gonzenbach is a talented and favored  artist. Winner of the Irène Reymond Foundation Prize and Swiss Artists in Lab Programme Prize in 2009, he exhibited his mortadella skull at the Museum Maillol in Paris during the exhibition Vanities! From Caravage to Damien Hirst. He has also been seen atthe abbey of Bellelay. Creator of metaphoric and wonderful worlds, Christian Gonzenbach works around the Vanities with audacity. In this exhibition, he presents Homo ab ovo, a skull made out of an ostrich egg shell. If vanity suggests that our existence on Earth is in vain, and human life precarious, then Christian Gonzenbach reveals to us this fragility by his choice of medium.As a watchful observer of every day life, he often begins his work by an ordinary situation, an insignificant state or a trivial object such as the butterfly in his work burned firefly. He explores the potential offered by these elements in order to create a tragic or ironic environment. Christian Gonzenbach declares : “My research consists in exploring this exiguous border between the normal and the weird, where the world looses its meaning and topples over into absurdity, craziness or poetry.” Photographer, video director and designer, this accomplished artist invents unbelievable worlds where he uncovers everyday life elements caught  in between dreams and nightmares.