Anselm Stalder
Anselm Stalder, SEINEBILDER, 2012
Anselm Stalder was born 1956 in Rheinfelden, Switzerland. He lives and works in Basel and Bern. In the early 1980s, Stalder was discovered in the context of the Swiss „wilde Malerei“ (= wild painting) and is often named together with contemporaries such as Martin Disler – even though his work is intellectually more complex than the examination of just one medium or contextual idea. Since 1999, Stalder is director of studies at the University of the Arts in Bern.
Anselm Stalder’s oeuvre is characterized by a remarkable stylistic pluralism and by the diversity of techniques and media he utilizes. One of his main points of focus in the beginning of his artistic career is the analysis of our world of things, of the individual, its body and its sensory perception. But Stalder’s cool-objective style is always very different from the expressive gesture of the “Neue Wilde”. In his drawings and sculptures from the 1980s, Stalder’s fondness for grids, order, and structure becomes apparent. Beginning of the 1990s, the artist is interested in a profoundly conceptual approach. His works of this time often reflect the relationship between speech/language and painting. Today, Stalder aims to construct exhibitions that reflect the mechanics of exhibitions themselves. It is this reflection on the possibilities and the limits of contemporary art that has been part of Stalder’s works from the very beginning. Presumably it is Anselm Stalder's self-reflexive and analytical attitude, which inspires critics to name him as the philosopher of the Swiss art scene.
Anselm Stalder’s oeuvre is characterized by a remarkable stylistic pluralism and by the diversity of techniques and media he utilizes. One of his main points of focus in the beginning of his artistic career is the analysis of our world of things, of the individual, its body and its sensory perception. But Stalder’s cool-objective style is always very different from the expressive gesture of the “Neue Wilde”. In his drawings and sculptures from the 1980s, Stalder’s fondness for grids, order, and structure becomes apparent. Beginning of the 1990s, the artist is interested in a profoundly conceptual approach. His works of this time often reflect the relationship between speech/language and painting. Today, Stalder aims to construct exhibitions that reflect the mechanics of exhibitions themselves. It is this reflection on the possibilities and the limits of contemporary art that has been part of Stalder’s works from the very beginning. Presumably it is Anselm Stalder's self-reflexive and analytical attitude, which inspires critics to name him as the philosopher of the Swiss art scene.