Rotwand :: Artists :: Luc Mattenberger

Artists :: Luc Mattenberger

Luc Mattenberger

Luc Mattenberger
Square, Triangle and Light, 2016
Wood, tiles, metal, light, loudspeakers
224 x 164 x 175 cm ( 88 1/4 x 64 5/8 x 68 7/8 inch )
Installation view at Haus für Kunst Uri, Altdorf

EXHIBITIONS AT ROTWAND

Luc Mattenberger, 2012
Luc Mattenberger, 2015

Biography
Documentation

Born 1980 in Geneva/Switzerland
Lives and works in Geneva/Switzerland

Fundamental, dynamic processes have always been the focus of the research, which Luc Mattenberger began a few years ago. Paradoxically, however, his visual and iconographic language seems to be based on formal elements rather than on a conceptual or, in more general terms, discursive orientation. In order to understand his work, it is important to recognize the permanent shift and opposition of varyingly connoted forces that characterize his pictorial vocabulary. At first glance the sculptural aspect of his work is very seductive, but the relation of these objects to the space around them has an unresolved quality. Something too direct and too distant prevents them from coinciding with reality. His works could be more aptly described as “prototypes” rather than “sculptures.” But he is not a Swiss Panamarenko; the way Mattenberger refers to actions that have already taken place is not exclusively literary, nor is it oriented towards the past with its foregone utopias. In contrast, Mattenberger’s works seem detached from the moment in which they were realized. Taking a silent, offensive stance, they assert themselves, nonetheless, and express their deeper understanding through senses other than the visual. Incorporating motors or other elements stemming from the early industrial imagination, the work presents a stance, which is based on the reformulation of an existing mythology—a mythology that can, on one level, potentially be transformed and take a different path. The motor is a carrier and symbol of power but also the source of fundamentally dynamic processes; and it is also a catalyst of the most mysterious matter known to our society: crude petroleum.
(Excerpts from a text by Noah Stolz)