Pas
tout seul
the third exhibition
Musée d art et d histoire in Neuchâtel,
Switzerland
View of entire installation, the Collapsible Kunsthalle is in the center.
Pas tout seul ("not alone") is an exhibition consisting
of two installations in the Collapsible Kunsthalle: one by
Steve Litsios
and one by Mark Staff Brandl. Litsiois is an artist from both the US and
Switzerland, living in the French-speaking part of the latter country in
the town of La Chaux de Fonds. Brandl is the founder of the Collapsible
Kunsthalle and an artist from both the US and Switzerland, where he lives
in the German-speaking part in the village of Trogen. The artists were
invited to exhibit together in the Musée d art et d histoire in Neuchâtel,
Switzerland, wher they were given a beautiful, faceted round room. They
decided to place the Collapsible Kunsthalle in a room.reflecting floor
work, and create two new installations for the Kunsthalle, placing
it at the center of the room.
View of the interior (opened for photo).
Litsios: hanging paper in foreground; Brandl: wall paintings in left back
corner.
Closeup view through Lisios installation.
Close-up of Lisios installation.
Close-up of Brandl painting installation.
Detail of floor objects
Video of the Collapsible Kunsthalle with the two installations
leaving the Musée d' art.
From the Catalogue:
In his own words, the work of Mark
Staff Brandl is something of a "mongrel" or "creole" combination of
installation, painting and comics.
Having lived in the US and the Caribbean before coming to the
German-speaking part of Switzerland, Brandl has personally experienced the
promise of creolization as an idea — the coming together of diverse
cultural traits to form new elements.
It can be said that Steve Litsios is also an offspring of creolization.
American with Greek roots, he has lived a good part of his life in the
French-speaking part of Switzerland and studied art on both continents.
Although Litsios previously used traditional sculptural and painting
techniques, he now employs emoticons as subject matter for his
installations created using diverse collage processes.
"Iconsequentiality" is Brandl's neologism for the combination of forms of
phenomenological perception in comics — and his art. Viewers perceive both
the entire page or installation as an iconic unit and simultaneously
follow the flow of images from panel to panel. Such a work is concurrently
whole/part and openly multi-linear.
This way of seeing has also found form Litsios' work. In one recent
installation, 500 sheets of paper containing short phrases, icons and
drawings were hung high in two rows. The viewer, while moving through
these sheets, followed a sequence dependent on the content and the order
in which it was viewed.
The dialogue between these two artists and their combined art arises in a
very spontaneous, natural process. Here, Litsios in his Paper Installation
and Floor Bubbles questions our perception of large and small in
relationship to location. Brandl's miniature Covers and Panel Corner
installation muse on diverse existential conflicts.
The Collapsible Kunsthalle itself is a contemporary, non-collecting museum of art operating since 2003. Distinctively, it folds together, fitting into an attaché case.
Anna Busch, Zurich and New York
