Jean Otth, Works

Jean Otth (1940–2013) was a pioneer of video art in Switzerland. While studying art history and philosophy in the early 1960s, he began to experiment with the then very new medium, making full use of its visual potential. From the beginning, Otth’s artistic trajectory, which was influenced by the practice of painting, became closely tied to the emergence of new technologies. Throughout his career he mixed immaterial video projection with material reality and explored their interaction. While constantly questioning the media he used, Otth produced borderline works that test the observer and provoke desire through covering-up, reframing, and shifting.

This new monograph, the first book ever in English on this remarkable artist, features photographic and filmed works as well as his drawings from all periods of his career.

Publisher: Scheidegger & Spiess
Edited by Nicole Schweizer
Concept and design: Adeline Mollard
With contributions by Robert Ireland, Agathe Jarczyk and Geneviève Loup
1st edition, 2020
Text in English and French
Paperback
224 pages, approx. 188 color and 191 b/w illustrations
In collaboration with the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne

Taro Izumi, exhibition visual identity (2020)
Museum Tinguely

Visual identity for the exhibition “ex” of Japanese artist Taro Izumi at Museum Tinguely Basel, Switzerland from 2.9 to 15.11.2020. Three different design fitting the different formats: F4, F12, F24, animated poster, banner, exhibition flyer, postcards… Collage with the piece “Tickled in a dream … maybe?” by Taro Izumi.

Design in collaboration with Sylvan Lanz.

Finale 20, HKB

www.finale20.ch

This website is a metaphor of an exhibition space. It was realized for the School of Visual Art Bern (HKB), Switzerland during the covid–19 pandemic. It replaces the final diploma exhibition 2020 that only took place online on this web environment.

Web Development: Thibault Brevet
Sound Design: Adrien Kaeser
HKB Team: Urs Lehni, Van Tran Hin, Jasmin Jacobs

Taro Izumi, ex, 2020
Museum Tinguely

Concept and design for the exhibition catalogue ex by Japanese artist Taro Izumi at Museum Tinguely, 2020. Taro Izumi manipulates opposites. He uses absurdity, chance, accidents and humour as constitutive elements of his work. The journey he has imagined for Museum Tinguely is scattered with mirages and optical illusions: a theatre where the public has vanished, sculptures that imitate acrobatic positions and robotic vacuum cleaners suspended in space. Izumi creates antagonistic and often surrealistic object pairings, the meaning of which often remains a mystery. Together, these objects root themselves in the absurdities of our everyday life to recount to us the gentle chaos of today’s world. Also reflecting on the unprecedented situation the world is presently experiencing, Taro Izumi explores the space in between presence and absence, inside and outside, while inviting the viewers to enter his imaginary world.

The catalogue works as a long piece of paper measuring 3274cm total. No page numbers on the pages but a centimeter scale that helps the reader navigate through the book and the index. The french fold binding, the images going into the bleed from one page to the other, and the text oriented horizontally accentuate the impression of an infinite book.

After production, each book went through a performance process made by Taro Izumi himself. On the back cover of the book a list enumerates the performances.

Publication Editor: Museum Tinguely, Basel
Managing Editor: Séverine Fromaigeat
Book Concept: Séverine Fromaigeat, Taro Izumi, Adeline Mollard
Graphic Design: Adeline Mollard with Sylvan Lanz
Image Conception: Taro Izumi, Mika Maruyama, Mariko Mikami, Mari Uruta
Publisher: Hatje Cantz

Théâtre Sévelin 36

Folded poster presenting the program of the season.

Théâtre Sévelin 36

Corporate identity for contemporary dance theater based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Established in 1995 by choreographer Philippe Saire, Théâtre Sévelin 36 will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2020. Théâtre Sévelin 36 is managed by Un lieu pour la danse and aims to develop and promote contemporary dance within the local, national and international cultural arena and increase public awareness of its practices and issues. The theatre was the recipient of the 2013 Special Dance Award from the Federal Office of Culture. Its activities take place in two locations in Lausanne: Théâtre Sévelin 36, located at avenue de Sévelin 36, and a 200m2 dance studio, Annexe 36, located at avenue de Genève 103.

Théâtre Sévelin 36

Identity and website for the contemporary dance theater Sévelin 36 in Lausanne Switzerland.
www.theatresevelin36.ch

Established in 1995 by choreographer Philippe Saire, Théâtre Sévelin 36 will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2020. Théâtre Sévelin 36 is managed by Un lieu pour la danse and aims to develop and promote contemporary dance within the local, national and international cultural arena and increase public awareness of its practices and issues. The theatre was the recipient of the 2013 Special Dance Award from the Federal Office of Culture. Its activities take place in two locations in Lausanne: Théâtre Sévelin 36, located at avenue de Sévelin 36, and a 200m2 dance studio, Annexe 36, located at avenue de Genève 103.

Typeface by Sylvan Lanz
Web Development by: Small Systems

Théâtre Sévelin 36

Poster campaign for contemporary dance theater in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Established in 1995 by choreographer Philippe Saire, Théâtre Sévelin 36 will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2020. Théâtre Sévelin 36 is managed by Un lieu pour la danse and aims to develop and promote contemporary dance within the local, national and international cultural arena and increase public awareness of its practices and issues. The theatre was the recipient of the 2013 Special Dance Award from the Federal Office of Culture. Its activities take place in two locations in Lausanne: Théâtre Sévelin 36, located at avenue de Sévelin 36, and a 200m2 dance studio, Annexe 36, located at avenue de Genève 103.

Théâtre Sévelin 36, Website

www.theatresevelin36.ch

Concept and design for the website of the dance theater Sévelin 36 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The starting page works as a one page scroll with video that follows a given choreography. We change this choreography every year like the dance program as well.

Web development: Luke Archer

Children, Olivier Suter

Edition Patrick Frey, 2019
Hardcover, 288 Seiten, 142 Farbabbildungen
12.4 × 16.7 cm
ISBN: 978-3-906803-99-9
With 10 different marmored endpapers

The photographs in Children date from different eras, as can be seen from the different kinds and styles of portraiture. Looking at these children, some of them accompanied by a mother or father, siblings or friends, we wonder at first why they were picked for this collection. Leafing through the pages, it gradually dawns on us that these are the soft fresh faces of future writers, mathematical geniuses and other famous or infamous people—including some future dictators. And then we begin puzzling over the features and expressions on their faces: Could this sleepy-looking kid be—or rather have become Jimi Hendrix? What about this ill-humored youngster amid his classmates: Arthur Rimbaud in the making? Is this here a wee Angela Merkel? And over here Al Capone as an unwashed rascal? Is that dapper lad there really a pint-sized Pope Francis? And that cheerful child Osama Bin Laden?!? We’re in for some big surprises indeed!

This book was awarded by The Most Beautiful Swiss Books award 2020.

Productive Universals—Specific Situations
Critical Engagements in Art, Architecture, and Urbanism

Anne Kockelkorn, Nina Zschocke (Eds.)

In today’s increasingly digitalized and neoliberal societies, debates on universals and specifics have gained new momentum. This volume situates the contemporary return to universal claims and concepts in the fields of art, architecture, and urbanism, and highlights the interrelation of the specific and the universal in diverse historical situations from the nineteenth century to the present. The collection’s essays thus venture an epistemic shift of the concept of universality: from essence to modality, from the abstract and static to the performative and productive.

Contributions by Ursula Biemann, Ariane Varela Braga, Gaia Caramellino, Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Johan F. Hartle, Samia Henni, Christa Kamleithner, Anne Kockelkorn, Filippo De Pieri, Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans, Emily E. Scott, Laila Seewang, Alla Vronskaya, Andrew Stefan Weiner, Nina Zschocke

Published by Sternberg Press

May 2019, English
21 x 14.8 cm, 448 pages, 27 b/w and 82 color ill., softcover
ISBN 978-3-95679-301-1
€25.00

Claudia Comte
I Was Grown Taller from Standing with Trees

Catalogue for the exhibition I Was Grown Taller from Standing with Trees at CC Contemporary, Copenhague.

Bad Bonn Kilbi 2019

—–> check website here

Visual identity for the music festival Bad Bonn Kilbi, based in Düdingen, Switzerland.
Website, posters, animations, booklet, and development of several KILBI typefaces, working as modular logo.

Design with Katharina Reidy
Assistant: Michele Brianza
Website Programming: Thibault Brevet with Alfatih Al Zouabi
Text typeface Gothic by Dinamo

Aita Bott Zuoz

Modular identity, letterhead and business cards for industrial designer Aita Bott. The logo can be read in several directions. This system allows the use of one same metal embossing form for the different media. The logo is also embossed on the back of the wood furnitures by Aita Bott.

Guillaume Pilet & Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris
My Life as a Parade

Dans My Life as a Parade, Guillaume Pilet (1984, vit à Lausanne) livre une série d’une quarantaine de dessins autobiographiques réalisés au crayon, à l’encre et à l’aquarelle. Conscient que « n’importe quelle biographie d’artiste est racontée de façon romancée », il choisit de raconter la sienne comme une histoire pour enfants, faisant défiler souvenirs fugitifs, événements dramatiques et anecdotes passagères sur des chars, comme dans une parade.

Bad Bonn Kilbi 2018

Check the website –––> here

Visual communication for the music festival Bad Bonn Kilbi. Website, posters, booklets and logo.

Designed in collaboration with Clemens Piontek
Website Programming: Thibault Brevet

Claudia Comte 40 × 40 cm

This book is a sort of exhibition space in which things get pieced together one by one on its blank pages, whose confined space gives rise to a playful reduction of the artworks. The pictures narrate an idea, as in a cartoon, except that the graphic works here – which have inspired some of Claudia Comte’s paintings, prints and murals – return from their three-dimensional existence to fit into the two-dimensional medium of the book. In the rigorous play of visual combinations and permutations, the planes, lines and squares occupy a metrical space – an absurdity that turns the book into a kind of two-dimensional sculpture.

This artist’s book is mathematically structured like a Cartesian coordinate system. The horizontal x-axis (abscissa) divides each page into two planes, while the fold down the middle of the book forms the vertical (ordinate) y-axis. This partitioning of the large-format (40 × 40 cm) book produces four smaller squares on each spread.

The Cartesian coordinate system becomes a playful space in which Comte explores the possibilities of her sculptures and patterns as well as geometric operations such as translation, rotation, reflection and glide reflection. The resulting shapes change position, evolving into unique sculptures while remaining part of a larger pattern. They playfully evolve and revolve around the point of origin where the two axes meet, though always retaining their isometry. So the book can be read from all four sides: from the top and from the bottom, from the left and from the right.

Guillaume Pilet
I WAS BORN TO BE DRAMATIC

Artist’s monograph.
With texts by Nicole Schweizer, Sabine Rusterholz Petko.
Under the direction of Nicole Schweizer.
Edited by Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2017

Stéphan Landry
Tout va bien

Edition Patrick Frey & Musée Jenisch Vevey

Advertising slogans, punning neon signs, chocolate brand and movie studio logos – Stéphan Landry’s variegated world of fiction and commerce is a Hollywood idyll in which, as the slogan goes, “Tout va bien”. On sheets of A3 paper during and after his training in Geneva, on squared loose-leaf during his wanderjahre, then softened recycled paper due to dire straits, Landry created a veritable Warholian alphabet executed in techniques ranging from gouache, ink, glaze, synthetic varnish to Tipp-Ex.

The happiness industry may pitch the bright side of life as loudly as it likes: Landry bares its underlying mechanisms by means of exaggeration, turning his pop art into an intimate portrait of the artist and his everyday environs. Landry’s signature mischievousness is all over his iconic works, and he invests them with a sensuality that is less sumptuous than explicit. And yet there they are, anonymous and isolated from the world, silhouettes frail as those by Markus Raetz.

Softcover
304 Pages
18 × 25.5 cm
ISBN: 978-3-906803-44-9
English, French

Presence
A Conversation at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich

Edited by Jürg Berthold, Kristina Hinrichsen, Philip Ursprung, Mechtild Widrich

With contributions by Elisabeth Bronfen, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Michael Hampe, Mark Jarzombek, Amelia Jones, Tom Levin, Dieter Mersch, Rebecca Schneider, Peter Zumthor

Recently, the idea of “presence” has returned to the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In February 2013, in Zurich’s historical Cabaret Voltaire, which was central to the Dada movement almost a hundred years ago, an experimental international symposium took place that put presence under the microscope.

Presence: A Conversation at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich is not a traditional post-conference publication but is conceived as a theatrical discussion of ideas between different speakers, both on and offstage. In contrast to transcribed conversations, monologues are interspersed throughout the book, acting like small, performative interruptions. The lively juxtaposition of both individual speech and colloquy is enhanced by theatrical conventions: characters enter and exit; stage directions mirror those found in the cabaret.

In collaboration with Elektrosmog.

www.sternberg-press.com

Selina Reiterer
Series of 3 lookbooks presenting the work of designer Selina Reiterer.

MYKITA MY+

Logo, art direction and leporello design for MYKITA MY+ lenses. These lenses incorporate a polarising filter. In addition to optimum glare and UV protection, they also boast the best possible filter effect against undesirable surface reflections; the result is ultra-sharp contrast. Furthermore, an exclusive gold antireflective coating on the reverse of the lenses reduces unwanted reflections from surrounding light. A hard coating that repels oil, water and dirt ensures clear vision in all conditions. It also offers resistance to smears, fingerprints and scratches while allowing for quick and easy cleaning.

Bad Bonn Kilbi 2017

Check the Website –––> here

Visual communication for the music festival Bad Bonn Kilbi in Düdingen Switzerland.

Designed in collaboration with Katharina Reidy.

Der Wert der Oberfläche
Philip Ursprung
Essays zu Architektur, Kunst und Ökonomie

Concept and layout with Marco Walser, Elektrosmog

Sind Politik und Wirtschaft Motoren für künstlerische und architektonische Veränderungen? Das Forschungsprojekt «Der Wert der Oberfläche» an der ETH Zürich unter der Leitung von Philip Ursprung folgte dieser Fragestellung. Der Begriff «Wert» wird hier ebenso sehr in ökonomischen Zusammenhängen wie als eine Idee der Qualität in Kunst und Architektur gesehen. Wo sind Vergleichbarkeiten etwa zwischen dem frühen Industriekapitalismus, dem Crystal Palace in London, Herman Melvilles Roman Moby Dick und der leibhaftigen Erscheinung eines weissen Wals zu beobachten? Oder inwieweit prägten die Folgen der Bologna-Reform die Struktur der Hochschule für Architektur in Nantes von Lacaton & Vassal?
Aus dezidiert subjektiver Sicht zeigt Philip Ursprung in seinen 14 im Rahmen des Projekts entstandenen Essays Verbindungen zwischen Ökonomie, Architektur und Kunst auf. Seine unkonventionellen gedanklichen Pfade regen zur kritischen Reflexion an. Sie führen in teils neue, teils unerwartete, überraschende Denkräume, die es ermöglichen, Phänomene in bisher so nicht gesehenen, einander wechselseitig bedingenden Erscheinungsformen zu betrachten. Das Buch plädiert für eine spekulative Geschichtsschreibung und fordert dazu auf, manche theoretische Prämisse zu revidieren.

Bad Bonn Song Book, 2016

Check the website –––> here

Seeing as notes are generally the best way of putting music on paper, this publication, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Bad Bonn music venue in Fribourg, takes the form of a song book. Then again, since hardly any of the bands that play there actually notate their music, it’s an unusual song book that’s likely to appeal to laymen as well.

For two and a half years, artists performing at the Bad Bonn were asked to put their songs on paper. The results proved as diverse as their musical styles and personalities, including everything from sheet music and lyrics with guitar tabs to photos and drawings, it’s all there. The contributions show a side of the musicians’ creativity that doesn’t show on stage or on their recordings.

Café Bad Bonn in Düdingen, a small town in the Fribourg canton of Switzerland, was once a health resort and spa, but for nearly 25 years now it’s been a magnet for mobile music lovers by the lake Schiffenensee. Where Bonnstrasse comes to an end in the middle of nowhere stands a building. Behind its modest, almost staid, exterior is a venue with a surprisingly diverse lineup of artists you might see billed in London, Berlin or Paris. Whether metal, anti-folk, country, electronica, indie or hip hop, there’s room here for every niche and fringe in the popular music scene.

Some 2500 bands have played this little stage since 1991, including big names like My Bloody Valentine, Bonnie Prince Billy, The Prodigy, Queens of the
Stone Age, Ministry, Cat Power, The Young Gods and plenty of other international and local bands. Its club concerts aside, the highlight of the year is Bad Bonn’s annual Kilbi Festival. Acclaimed “Switzerland’s best festival” by renowned music critics and cultural journalists, the event has become a permanent fixture of the nation’s performing arts program.

In collaboration with Katharina Reidy
Edition Patrick Frey N° 198
Editor: Patrick Boschung, Daniel Fontana, Stefanie Mauron, Adeline Mollard, Katharina Reidy
With texts by: Conrad Lambert, Chan Marshall, Benedikt Sartorius, Christophe Schenk
Softcover, 528 pages, 264 color images
21 × 29.7 cm
ISBN: 978-3-905929-98-0
Language: German, English, French

www.editionpatrickfrey.ch

Bad Bonn Kilbi 2016

Check the website –––> here

Design in collaboration with Katharina Reidy

Fennesz

Poster for the concert of Fennesz, Morb and Pendler at Bad Bonn, Düdingen.

MYKITA Campaign 2015

Art direction, editing and layout for the 2015 MYKITA Campaign.
Photography: Mark Borthwick

Bad Bonn Kilbi an der Grenze

Identity for the music festival Kilbi an der Grenze, guest in Palace St.Gallen.

In collaboration with Katharina Reidy.

Bad Bonn Kilbi im Fall

Festival identity for the music festival Kilbi as guest at Palace St. Gallen.

www.kilbi-im-fall.ch

Fri Art—Centre d’Art de Fribourg / Kunsthalle Freiburg

Logo and corporate identity for the Art Center Fribourg. In collaboration with Philippe Egger.

GATE 113 / 114

Booklets and book for the Neue Schule für Fotografie, Berlin. Compiling the work of 14 students. The book is available as 14 separated booklet or as a full bounded book with 14 chapters. A color system is assigned to each student.

www.neue-schule-fotografie.berlin

Galerie 1m3, Lausanne

Logo and corporate identity for the Galerie 1m3 in Lausanne. The identity is based on a set of 4 stickers that are use on every kind of communication’s medium–posters, flyers, business card, merch… A blank square allows to add informations per hand. The galerie was run by Stéphane Barbier Bouvet, Jeanne Graff, Adrien Missika and Benjamin Valenza until 2014.

In collaboration with Philippe Egger

Vues / Blick 2008 – 2013
Michel Bonvin

Exhibition catalogue for photographer Michel Bonvin compiling his work from the period 2008 to 2013.

www.michelbonvin.ch