Could you talk a bit about your background, and what inspired you to become an artist?
A confused but persistent calling. I still don’t know exactly what I am trying to do or why, but there is always just another thing to try out. I was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and grew up in the Swiss Jura. My dad is a neurologist, my mother a biologist and my sister a dermatopathologist (I’m the only one without a doctor title). But even though they all chose a scientific profession, my family are all voracious readers and art lovers, which certainly influenced me. I studied architecture at ETH in Zurich, all the while doing some art projects on the side and briefly attending the art school there (ZHdK), and later decided to follow that strange calling, which led me to the San Francisco Art Institute, and later to the Slade in London. I never felt like a particularly ‘artistic’ person, apart from the fact that I make art, so quite a few people around me thought I was mad to give up a career in architecture, including my parents. I told them they shouldn’t have taken us to so many museums, to Florence, to Gent, to Paris, to see all the masterworks!
Could you describe the development of your vision as an artist?
I was strongly influenced by my architecture studies, my main ‘subjects’ are still space and light. I discovered architectural Utopias such as Boullée’s, as well as Minimalism, installation art, …
When I decided to become an artist, I wanted to hear nothing more of architecture and invent a completely new language to express myself. Now in hindsight I notice I still use very much the same language, but to say different things, things that are not bound to the complex responsibilities of the architectural profession.
What are the main influences for your work right now? What do you do, or where do you go to find creative inspiration?
Walking and cycling around with my son. We didn’t have much childcare during lockdown, so I spent more time going to parks and playgrounds and looking around. Otherwise I am experimenting with some parallel perspective technique and was reading a book about Hokusai. The only thing that is always constant in my practice is a huge amount of doubt. It seems like something between a colossal waste of time and a necessary ‘pruning’ process, I am not sure.
What does the word ‘perfectionism’ mean to you?
A series of great exhibitions curated by Becca. Otherwise: a compulsive disorder. I was always warned against it, encouraged to let go and relax. I worked for an architect, Peter Märkli, who used to say that if you get 90% it’s enough. A friend of mine remarked that only a perfectionist would say that. Striving and ambition are nothing bad in my view, but perfectionism is often associated with unrealistic expectations, of the type that can actually hinder progress rather than encourage it. My experience is that in order to finish things I need to compromise, fail a bit, fix it as well I can, and then let go.
What has your experience been like working on an online exhibition as opposed to a physical exhibition?
The experience was great. I also had another online exhibition with Encounter, and I was so grateful to be able to show some work in the midst of lockdown. On reflection, I struggle a bit with the labelling. I think the fact that it is called ‘exhibition’ can confuse people. Since what most people understand as ‘exhibition’ is precisely a physical gathering of artworks, I got asked a few times in what way this online project was an ‘exhibition’, as opposed to a website. Of course, the curation makes the difference for me, the press release, the events around it, but perhaps calling it a ‘project’ of some sort would have made it less like a lesser version of something else.
What has been your most exciting or interesting lockdown discovery?
That people are better than you’d expect from reading the newspaper.