JANUARY 17 – MARCH 08, 2009

The artistic gesture as a motif forms a constant in the art Aloïs Godinat is currently producing: transformations, shifts in meaning and context, a play on perspectives and new forms of organisation, using means of communication as cultural material. Godinat brings into play elements of art and object history, concretely integrating them in his examination of form and function, so that this act can simultaneously be understood as dealing with the very nature of cultural communication as such. Making his starting point the study of the formal language of art and especially modernist concepts of art, such as Minimalism, Formalism, Abstract and Concrete Art, he contrasts with his artistic forerunners by using a rather more understated visual vocabulary. What makes his works special lies in its details: the choice of colours, the structure of the materials used, the way fragments, images or typography are treated. Processes of action and transformation are visibly inscribed into his objects. By making use of simple materials such as paper, cardboard, rubber and wood, as well as through his perceptive handling of questions of presentation, the artist achieves an exceptional lightness and clarity in his exhibitions. Godinat creates a relationship of tension between subject, object, space, time, density of signs and emptiness. His installations, spatial assemblages, objects, wall art, serigraphy and collages, which he often creates and shows in-situ, are based on strategies of appropriation and recombination, playing with the meaning of an art-historical canon. With minimalist pieces full of humour, he sometimes demystifies the ideas of the avant-garde and in doing so builds a bridge to a potential formal language for our times today. In this way, Godinat develops a personal canon of works, that, owing to its referentiality, on the one hand triggers a sensation of recognition in the observer, and, on the other, asserts its artistic independence.

Beside already existing works Godinat will develop a row of new works especially for the exhibition situation at the Bielefelder Kunstverein.

Aloïs Godinat (*1978 in Switzerland) lives and works in Lausanne. He studied till 2005 at the ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne and received recently the Swiss Manor-Art-Price. His works were shown recently in the context of solo exhibitions as for example at the Artists Space, New York 2007; at the Galerie Francesca Pia, Zürich 2007; and at the Kunsthalle Bern 2008.

The exhibition of Aloïs Godinat is supported generously by Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung.

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