Exhibition
Opening reception: Thursday, April 10th 6-8 pm
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition by Zürich-based artist Zilla Leutenegger.
Zilla Leutenegger has described her work as ‘video drawing’. Her digital animations are highly personal reflections on the artist and her place in the world, and bring a rare fluency and lyricism to the medium. Her work usually features Leutenegger herself appearing in a range of personae, and often reconfigures feminine and masculine stereotypes in unexpected ways.
For her exhibition at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Leutenegger will be presenting a new DVD animation, ‘Der Grosse Schnee’, projected onto a giant billboard installed in the gallery. Making humorous reference to her Swiss nationality and the pressure to perform on ‘the big stage’ in New York, the artist appears against a panoramic background of snowy Swiss mountains, throwing a series of snowballs out of the picture towards us. Lying around the gallery floor, these snowballs are revealed as crumpled pieces of paper, suggesting rejected drawings overflowing from a wastepaper basket. With typical humor and optimism, however, the artist will turn these ‘failed’ drawings into her own success: offering them for sale during the exhibition, as sculptural objects on plinths.
Artist Bio
Zilla Leutenegger was born in Zürich in 1968 and graduated from the University of Art and Design, Zürich in 1999. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, including shows at Studio Massimo de Carlo, Milan; and MAMCO, Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva. Her work has been included in group exhibitions internationally, including ICA, London; the New Museum, New York; and Centre pour l’image Contemporaine, Saint-Gervais, Geneva.
Further Reading
This exhibition coincides with the Swisspeaks festival, celebrating Swiss culture in New York, throughout March, April, and May 2003. For more information, see www.swisspeaks.org