Chantal Michel - Press release
)
Photo- and Videoworks
March - April 2001
Show: Chantal Michel Photo- and Videoworks
Vernissage: Friday, March 9, 2001, 7pm - 11pm
Duration: March 10 - May 5, 2001
Chantal Michel was born in 1968 in Bern, Switzerland. She studied from
1989-93 in the class for ceramics at the SfG Bern, Switzerland and from
1994-98 at the Art Academy Karlsruhe, Germany, in the class of Professor
Harald Klingelhöller. Michel lives and works in Thun and Bern, Switzerland.
Chantal Michel won numerous awards and prices for her work, i.e. 1994
the Aeschlimann-Corti-Grant, 1995 the Prix Saint-Gervais at the International
Videofestival Geneve, 1997 the grant of the Schweizer Bankvereins, 1998
the Price at the Videofestival Locarno. Michel's work was shown in numerous
exhibitions.
"Chantal Michel works with different media. In some photo works,
that originate from the last two years and that form the center of her
still young oevre in the meantime, she appears as a creature - disguised
and far from reality.
The performances and videos play with wit, absurdity, appearance and reality. All works spellbind the observer through their obvious ludicrousity and celebrated esthetics. Disguise, inversion of physical laws and influence on the speed of the videos are simple measures that the artist uses to stage her "absurd" theater.
In a serene and playful way, but also through the use of hardest physical work with her body she succeeds to isolate human instances of emotion. Precise and poetic at the same time her works show immovableness, restraint or freedom. The in the absurd doing indicated, touches always know psychological conditions, which makes her work irritating and critic.
Where the colorful taffeta- and ruffelrobes bring the absurdity of the
doing of the artist to the foreground, especialle the female role turns
out as painful despair."
(Claudia Stein, Büro für Fotografie Berlin, 1999)
