Beat Zoderer
SÆULEN NACH ATHEN
13.05. – 24.06.2012

The work of the Swiss artist Beat Zoderer, born in 1955, is often classified as a painter within the art world. A classification that Zoderer repeatedly and with great pleasure undermines through sculptures and wall works, as well as through assemblages and installation works, which show a very idiosyncratic and independent approach to art in their unmistakable imagery.

Zoderer’s most striking stylistic devices are the use of geometric shapes and multi-colored elements. These allow comparisons with the Op Art of the 1960s and 70s, as well as with the strict formality and minimalism of the De Stijl movement. At the same time, they also provide an ironic look at the art of his immediate “forefathers”, the Swiss Concrete artists.

With a few exceptions, his works are united by the use of everyday materials and commercially available objects such as wood, corrugated cardboard, bent sheet metal, plastic, but also textiles and rubber. Beat Zoderer assembles these materials in an often logical, mathematically calculated arrangement: sometimes in rows next to each other, sometimes interwoven or stacked and glued on top of each other. All of the works have the motif of the “snaking line” in common, a line with no beginning or end that winds and meanders across the surface, sometimes forming larger, sometimes smaller arches and appearing in a wide variety of colors and materials. The aim of this way of working is to create colorful, three-dimensional works that often cause irritation, precisely because these objects are known from completely different contexts. At the same time, however, an ironic component is also conveyed, which is explicitly intended by the artist: What does corrugated polyester, actually known from simple balcony cladding or allotment gardens, do as a colorfully accentuated picture on the wall?
In the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, Beat Zoderer will, among other things, build a column made of foam and sculpt it: Columns to Athens!

Curated by Thomas Trümper.