As the artist's previous projects Finger in the book and Bibliotherapy have shown, literature is both the point of departure and a complex reference system for the new extensive group of works On Travel by Swiss artist Rémy Markowitsch (born in 1957). On his expeditions into the inner sanctum of travel and photography books, the artist discovers fantastic surreal image worlds and dreamlike exotic landscapes, which he documents in large-format photographs.

Another photographic series On Travel: Tristes Tropiques is based on photographs taken by the anthropologist and ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss of the Caduveo and Mundé Indians in Brazil's Mato Grasso. The photographs are accompanied by an audio installation with quotations taken from literary accounts, travelogues, and scientific records.

The texts, which are read by Rémy Markowitsch, describe the authors' encounters with foreign landscapes and people - while turning the spotlight on the 'white' traveller's perspective. An ironic reversal of this perspective, on the other hand, is shown by a 'modernistic primeval hut' presenting an African view of the 'white man's' dwelling, conceived in co-operation with architect Philipp von Matt, and which is an allusion to Nigel Barley's The Innocent Anthropologist.

The project On Travel arose in co-operation with the Museum zu Allerheiligen/ Kunstverein Schaffhausen, Switzerland, and is accompanied by an artist book with reproductions of the photographs and a collage of literary and documentary text quotations (Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg). Besides the group of works On Travel, the exhibition in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg will include other objects, video and room installations that reflect the central theme while providing a broader cross-section of Rémy Markowitsch's oeuvre.

< Top of Page