Caro Niederer
Barbara Seiler Zurich is pleased to present the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Swiss artist Caro Niederer. The exhibition is titled ‘Strolled’ and will be on view from 28 October, 2022 to 18 February, 2023.
Caro Niederer (*1963 in Zurich, Switzerland) is a contemporary conceptual artist, currently living and working in Zurich. Her dynamic work engages with themes such as the contextual malleability of images throughout the arts and media, and the creative relationship between art and everyday life. Niederer’s work is multi-medial, incorporating various artistic and artisanal techniques such as painting, photography, video, hand-knotted Chinese silk carpets, furniture, porcelain, glasswork, tapestry and multiples.
The starting point of Niederer’s work is always photographs from her personal photo archive, often shot quickly and coincidentally of situations from her private life and immediate environment, similar to a diary or an instagram account. They are insights into the artist’s everyday situations and show places she has been to and people, often family members and friends, who surround her: shopping at a farmers market, children playing on a beach, a park in Zurich or a lake in the mountains. They can also be interiors, a workplace with a computer or a flower vase on a table, often showing the artist’s home. With these pictures, Niederer allows us an intimate insight into a moment of her life and lets us become part of her cosmos.
The first translation of these photographs mostly happens into painting, whereby Niederer takes the liberty to freely interpret the photograph, omit things, add things or choose a new perspective. This way, different paintings can develop from one photograph. In 1993, Niederer began to translate paintings into tapestries. Through personal contacts she found a factory in China that could produce silk carpets with very fine weave. In 2006, a new series of silk tapestry followed at the occasion of the artist’s participation in 6th Shanghai Biennale entitled ‘Hyper Design’.
‘Strolled’ is a stroll through different places and seasons, media and times, and includes early hand-knotted silk tapestry and paintings from the brown series, most recent paintings, ceramics, glassworks and photography, often showing places that Niederer has been revisiting over time. We see familiar places like Villa Wesendonck 2006, a magnificent villa in an old park and home of museum Rietberg, Zurich, a park in Rieterpark II 2000 and Rieterpark 2021, or Schlittelbahn Heubeeribühl, 2006, a snow covered hill framed by a row of houses and old trees that mark the border to the city of Zurich. Children in snow suits and young adults with sleds casting long shadows are seen walking up a hill. The snow looks used and somewhat dirty as snow only looks in cities, traces of the many sleds and snow boots. But as we get closer to the work these traces turn into an abstract pattern, almost like calligraphy on glazed paper. Often caught in a zone between extreme physical precision and optical ambiguity, Niederer’s work triggers not only curiosity but the beauty of refined complexity.
Niederer counts among the most prominent Swiss female artists. Her work has been exhibited widely in major institutions and galleries nationwide and abroad. Recent institutional exhibitions include Centre Pasquart, Biel (2022), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2017/2018), CAC Malaga (2006), Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (2006), Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2005), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2005) and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2004).
Text: Alex Karapancsev