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About Martin Gut


From year to year, the body of work of the swiss mixed-media artist Martin Gut gains increasing complexity, and with every announcement from his studio the audience wonders: “What is he up to this time?”, for it has often been hard to foresee what object or experience the artist’s leap of thought could bring us to. And yet, from a bird-eye view, one cannot help but notice the consistent personal development trajectory over the 20 years of his artistic work, scarcely marked with some substantive and technical diversions. Although many of his works have an immediate effect and reach their goal with no delays and detours, Martin Gut seems to be resistant to singularity of his artworks. They all are part of a large whole, part of a total artwork aiming at inevitably vague, but intuitively perceptible life events.

Among them are sculptures, three-dimensional collages and inventions resorting to technical and intellectual products – set and props of the modern times, which produce thought-provoking pointed statements beyond aesthetic complaisance. Machines comprise another category of his works. Through their deviant malfunction, they invite us to cast an entertained and startled look at their transformative and destructive potential in our lives. Yet another category consists of installations, designed spaces and actions, often functioning without factual art objects, enabling us to experience discursive encounters and processes of unexpected intensity, for which hardly anybody would willingly leave their comfort zone. And then, intentionally placed at the bottom of the list, there are paintings, on which multiple layers of picture and world fragments are with ultimate precision and eloquence committed to the confined space of the canvas. The language of his works speaks far beyond the picture frame, liberating our world view shaped by the interplay of coincidence and intent, and offering us a broader perspective.

An attempt to reconcile all these embodied ideas, attitudes and messages of Martin Gut’s work would be almost doomed to fail, for the true sense of his multifaceted creative work is more of a challenge to stand up to the overwhelming absurdity and near hopelessness of our contemporary time. It is an invitation to carefully examine and evaluate the phenomenon that deprives us of our inner peace. By doing so, we could elicit its poetic power and acquire an additional tool for the understanding of human existence.

Being a staunch realist, he starts anew on the breakpoints of the late ‘classical’ Modernism, when the Surrealist Revolution of the 1930s often crumbled down to artificial complaisance, fixation with the history of art and obsession with personalities of artists. Martin Gut directs his look behind the mirror of our existence and slowly and steadily, with impressive technical skills always remaining a prerequisite, makes his way outside of rush hour of the art market.


Text: Max Christian Graeff, translated from German to English by Hanna Hubarava




a selection of art exhibitions participations



2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1996 1994


Conceptual work, art project and art actions


2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2008 2007 2006


A selection of single exhibitions



2018
2016
2015
2014 2008 2006 2004 2003 2000 1999 1997


Soundperformance



2016 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2000 1999


Art in the public area



2012 2006 2004 1999


Awards



2015 2012 2004 2002 1994


Special purchase or work orders





Cultural Engangement & Mandate





Publication



2015 2014 2013 2012 2009 2008 2000