For many years an important contributor to Swiss art, Daniele Buetti's work explores the quest for personal identity in a weary world dominated by oppressive media machinery and consumer passions. Buetti, well known for his lightboxes, photographs and installations featuring defaced top models with artificial ballpoint pen scarifications, has lately concentrated on grotesque elements of his artistic topoi. Intricate installations trigger archetypal fears of the abnormal and evoke associations of violence and devastation.
Daniele Buetti.
The deconstruction of the surface in contrast to the presence of content and aura are recurrent themes in his protean work: As with many of the celebrated 'scarification pictures' displaying the household names of big couturiers or large multinationals, the simulated tattoos contributed to the demystification of canons of beauty and of the corresponding marketing strategies.
For the show at Haunch of Venison, Daniele Buetti appropriated images ranging from medieval etchings and votive scenes to recent press photos in order to depict the abysmal setting of today's life. Sublime motifs of entrancement and devotion are juxtaposed with cruel illustrations of mutilation and torture. The gallery space, altered into an atmospheric installation, assembles lightboxes, video and sculpture to simultaneously create the ambience of spiritual retreat and a gateway to the human abyss.
The evocative title 'Snowflakes over a Burning House' alludes to a very simple allegory of the controversial, yet interdependent parameters of Buetti's work: aura and deconstruction, glued together conjure the artist's perception of what he calls the 'Comédie humaine', the huge freak show of our lives.
DANIELE BUETTI
Opening 30 Aug, to 11 Oct 2008.
Haunch of Venison Zurich
AG Lessingstrasse 5
8002 Zurich
Switzerland
T: +41 43 422 8888 |
