Ulrich Meister's works on paper at the Swiss National Library
Bern, 08.10.2009 - In two exhibitions running simultaneously, the Prints and Drawings Department of the Swiss National Library, Bern, and Schaffhausen’s Museum zu Allerheiligen present the abundant oeuvre of Swiss artist Ulrich Meister. Bern will begin with a selection of works on paper, while Schaffhausen puts Meister’s drawings on show. The exhibition at the National Library lasts until 12 December, and at the Museum zu Allerheiligen until 29 November 2009.
The Prints and Drawings Department of the National Library has been collecting works on paper and artist’s books by Ulrich Meister since 1995. Meister was born in 1947 in Schaffhausen and now lives in Düsseldorf. He began his career in a master class with Joseph Beuys at the Art Academy of Düsseldorf, and earned initial international prestige in 1992, with his contribution of text-object pieces to documenta IX in Kassel.
Meister studies items drawn from our everyday life with the attention of a scientist, as if he were seeing them for the first time. He uses as few lines as possible – occasionally making do with just a single one – to draw these objects so succinctly and with such precision that they seem tangibly close to hand despite their reduced representation, trompe-l'oeil renderings that trick the eye into the perception of a virtually corporeal presence.
To this day, Meister's work as a visual artist inhabits the contested space between word and picture, alphabet and archetype, and thus addresses a central aspect of 20th and 21st-century art: the aesthetics of the trivial and banal, and the relationship between language and image.
Meister’s work ranges from the free-hand sketch and the ostensibly printed word, in his unmistakably meticulous and highly legible handwriting, all the way to the drastically reduced Platonic form of a given object. He takes as his subject such objects of everyday use as a water glass, a sock and a light bulb, as well as staples like a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese, and condenses them in the drawing process into icons of the quotidian, rendering them with a single line or with a boldly concise brushstroke.
Abridged to a silhouette, his chosen subjects occasionally also materialize in the form of a cut-out, and thus disguise themselves from the outset by means of this very reification, representing the object with all of its typical characteristics.
In addition to the works on paper, the National Library exhibition, which is curated by Susanne Bieri, will also comprise the premiere presentation of items from the artist’s comprehensive personal archive, in recognition of the fact that such documentation is at the moment gaining in significance among researchers.
In the form of the simultaneous shows in Schaffhausen and Bern, Meister will thus be made accessible to a broad Swiss public as well.
The Museum zu Allerheiligen will publish a detailed work with Hatje Cantz Verlag on the occasion of its exhibition.
www.nb.admin.ch/exhibitions
Address for enquiries
Susanne Bieri, Head of the Prints and Drawings Department of the Swiss National Library
Tel. +41 31 322 89 59
susanne.bieri@nb.admin.ch
Documents
Publisher
Swiss National Library
http://www.nb.admin.ch
