Bernhard Rüdiger — Bernard Bouche Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 16 → June 22, 2013

Back in Italy, Bernhard Rüdiger worked at the Casa degli artisti of Milan, founded by Luciano Fabro, Jole de Sanna and Hidetoshi Nagasawa in 1981, and helped to define the Italian art scene of the second half of the 1980s. After collaborations with such artists as Liliana Moro, Adriano Trovato and Mario Airò as well as several experimental collective projects, the group founded the journal Tirracorendo and the gallery Lo Spazio di Via Lazzaro Palazzi, an important institution in the Milanese art scene between 1989 and 1993. Bernhard Rüdiger subsequently made a name for himself in France with a monumental piece entitled La Poésie installed at the F.R.A.C. centre in 1995. Since then he has participated in numerous group exhibitions as well as personal shows.

Bernhard Rüdiger’s works confront the viewer with physical experiences bringing into play objects, bodies and space. Both sculptures and architectural monuments, his pieces seek to dialogue with history through meticulous spatial and acoustic arrangements. Rüdiger is particularly interested in opening up the possibility for his pieces to react to the presence of the visitors or to the elements, such as in Au premier siècle après le temps (2005), a piano emitting sounds exhibited in the gallery. The artist will also present two pieces from the Kuklux Klan series. Two white clay, two metre-long sculptures hang suspended from the ceiling; they are hollow, like vases, and the spectators can put their heads into them rather like a hat and observe the world outside through two openings. One feels protected, a strange yet pleasant sensation where the sounds are muffled by the dense material cutting one off from the rest of the room. When reminded of the titles of these works, the sensation changes and leaves the unpleasant feeling of being placed in the shoes of a member of the infamous racist organisation from the Southern United States, the masked spectator viewing the world from a hidden, obscure perspective.

Bernhard Rüdiger was born in Rome in 1964. A graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Milan, he has lived in Paris since 1994 and currently teaches at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Lyon.