2019 Artist-in-Residence : KARSTEN FÖDINGER
The Verbier 3-D Foundation is pleased to announce German artist Karsten Födinger as our 2019 artist-in-residence.
Realized through the engineering or construction techniques, the oeuvre of Födinger brings forth the role of the mechanics as a constitutional element of sculpture. His work reminds the viewer that it is such a genre that rigidly follows the law of physics. The architectonical fundamentals, such as the cantilever, the avalanche breaker, or the riverside reinforcements, are utilized as a language for one to reflect on the climatic, geographical uncertainties that grounds and un-grounds the current planetary condition.
Continuing in the 4th year of the Verbier 3-D Foundation’s climate and glacial project, the artist will be invited to consider the idea of restruction in relation to the aftermath of destructive climatic events, such as the Giétroz Castrophe.
Birthing from the ‘Year Without Summer’, which belongs to a three-year period of severe climate deterioration of global scale starting in 1815 after the eruption of Mounat Tambora, unforeseen chaotic and chilling weather caused many glaciers in Switzerland to increase in mass. The Giétroz Glacier in the Verbier region had advanced and loomed over the valley before continuous falling ice and avalanches caused a flood that swept through the Bagnes valley destroying everything in it’s path until Lake Geneva.
The Giétroz Catastrophe is one of the most famous and most disastrous historical events in the Swiss Alps related to climate change. Its folklore is embedded in the local history of the surrounding areas and recently resurrected due to it’s 200th anniversary. During the residency, this historic event becomes fused with current debates on effects of the present-day period of amplified global warming – the Anthropocene.
The artist will reside in Verbier to develop new sculptural work related to these cnoversations.
Födinger was born in 1978 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. He studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe and lives and works in Karlsruhe. His solo museum exhibitions include ‘Struttin’’, Kunstforum Baloise, Basel (2013); ‘Collection display: 14. Baloise Art Prize’, Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2013); ‘Void’, KIOSK, Ghent (2012); ‘C30/37; XD1, XF2’, Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2012); and ‘Cantilever’, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2011). He is the recipient of the 2012 Baloise Kunst-Preis, Art 43 Basel Statements. Födinger lives in Berlin.
