Boris Rebetez

The artist’s main inter­est lies in the var­i­ous con­cepts of space, which becomes obvi­ous when ana­lyz­ing his eclec­tic work con­tain­ing draw­ings, col­lages, sculp­tures, instal­la­tions and pho­tog­ra­phy. Space there­fore is not only addressed in terms of spa­tial sur­round­ing, but also as a the­o­ret­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal entity. Fur­ther, Boris Rebetez under­stands space as a to be expe­ri­enced sub­jec­tively and to be cre­ated mentally. Boris Rebetez’s exhi­bi­tion at the von Bartha Chesa in S-chanf is his first solo project with the Galerie von Bartha. The work, which the artist made espe­cially for this exhi­bi­tion, is tied con­cep­tu­ally to the sculp­ture, which was exhib­ited in the entrance hall of the Brus­sels show­room Kom­plot in 2011. Rebetez con­tin­ues with this inter­ven­tion by pick­ing up and respond­ing to the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the show­room in the Engadin. The mon­u­men­tal wood sculp­ture fills the white cube of the Chesa. How­ever, it leaves enough space for the vis­i­tor to move freely. The sculp­ture is a struc­ture inside a struc­ture, which again is placed inside another struc­ture. This suc­ces­sion of three autonomous, archi­tec­tonic or sculp­tural parts – the outer wall of the for­mer barn, the in these walls embed­ded white cube and finally the sculp­ture itself – all of which refer to each other, is essen­tial to the effect of the Boris Rebetez’ inter­ven­tion. The lower part forms a pas­sage, the tran­si­tory com­po­nent of which, in the sense of a sill, is empha­sized through light­en­ing on the bot­tom side of the cross­beam. Per con­tra to the tran­si­tory momen­tum of the sculpture’s lower part, the upper part appears bar­ri­caded. Addi­tional direc­tions of move­ment emanate from the beam con­struc­tion on the upper side of the sculp­ture. While the upper part of the sculp­ture seems to work against the empti­ness and sim­plic­ity of the white cube, the lower part, a tran­sit and rite of pas­sage, har­monises with its sur­round­ing. The non hier­ar­chi­cal “on top of each other” of the sculp­ture cre­ates its own space, while also inter­act­ing with the space sur­round­ing it. Due to this simul­tane­ity space can be expe­ri­enced as a mul­ti­for­mal, fac­tual and spir­i­tual entity.