Apr.22^nd 2011, by Ling GU

The classic quality of Yves Netzhammer’s art are from a variety of inverses i.e. the nature and culture, subject and object, perception and sensation. Through figurative images, the artist express with everyday objects in a straightforward way(animal, textile, lineary, bed, shoes…), the human figures are mostly asexual，the proportion and dimentional distortion，often applied colors: black, grey, white and red, the latter usually goes for blood… all these different elements are given to the audience to associate together.

In the other hand, the artist previewed what the audience would see or the way of seeing of the audience, he enhances a new concept for the images, so as enables a peculiar explaination and a somehow independent consciousness of every existence.

Y: Yves Netzhammer(the artist)

L: Li Zhenhua(the curator)

T: Ling GU, Mao Qian(interviewer)

Y: We selected this picture as an illustration of this interview criteria. I don’t the context behind it, but found it quite interesting. So 50-year-old is a good age?

T:（Smile）Yes I know where it came from, the website Awesomator recruits some of my works, this is one of. (Smile) Maybe, yes, 50-year-old is a good age.

We walked through the gallery criss-cross with black ropes and projecters from a little open area as their temporary “studio” on the second floor in MinSheng Art Museum, each wall becomes alive enframed one (set) of annimated video works. I stooped to get over two rope-bar, reminded me several groups of radial red lines seen in another 30mins video places in the next gallery.

T:So that’s from DEXTER?(note: a TV series of SHOWTIME)

He threw me a puzzled look, thought he misheard.

T:Dexter apply red ropes to simulately reduct the live scene when he do BPA(Bloodstain Pattern Analysis).

He realized the “model” and smiled, like a boy.

Y:Ah, you know it! Yes, I saw it, very interesting, not at the beginning, but after a while, Yes. I like this part of him.

T:Partially contains elements from psychological drama,the mental scar from his d childhood projected in his life and work, while his passion and “artistic” way to deal with blood is amazing.

Y:Right, it’s tricky that you link this with his test.(smile)

We walked downstair, passing by the corridor sidely decoed by his wall paintings, sit on a corner sofa in the patio, the side ground glass isolated the crowds of sounds in the other side.

T:So let’s continue with this drawing first:up-half is grave, down-half is popsicles, and you give a date for yourself. For me it can be quite representative.

Y:All my creations start back from drawing. Of course the 2021 is no more than a joke, but death definitely is a fact which everyone have no choice but to face it, sooner or later. And this is one of the subjects that really attract me to draw, to discover about. Everyone leads a life quite different from one another, more or less care about feelings, fears, emotions, thoughts and explainations in life. My drawing is a kindof network of different points of think, and hopefully reflect reality.

L:Yes, for me the most impressive from his works is a strong scent of childishness, purified from the adult world. Like once he said in an interview,”If I cut my figure with a knife, it feels different from cutting an apple.” I think only child would see things in this way, i.e. to cut my figures to try if I feel pain or not, bleeding or not. This might be treated as violence or self-mutilation. But all these “value-systems” are filtered out, this can be found out from the lineary in his drawing to a space work in general. Take a chapter from the 30mins video for example: a mother orangutan holds a baby, she drops urine on her finger and lick it to taste, afterwards she pushs her baby orangutan back into her vergina. Some people might think it’s discusting, but if you try to see it as a child, it can be quite interesting. Children are always this-like curiouse about all surroundings. For example, some may eat nails, live ants, dirt etc., so it’s an expression of childishness. So to explain his work, some scholars might apply philology system say his drawings communicate well as before the character be born. While I still prefer to analysis from his childishness, also due to his personality. He may read a lot books concerning psychology and philosophy etc., but equally interesting, he’s causiously staying away from this world, prefers to live in the world of hisown. You can call it the “madness” of artist, thus I think it’s cool to always keep this childishness and innocence, to keep a loving curiosity towards life, this interest may come from kindness as well as evilness. Through the exploration of evilness and acknowledge of cruelness, they all become portions of the all.

T:Nature, Fear, Entity seems to be the three keywords in your creation, but what link them together are actually pains. From which point you started to creat with this very strong characteristic imprint?

Y:Actually this time the title not named by me, is by Zhenhua. It’s very exceptional, cuz I always give names for my artworks, exhibitions by myself.

T:I feel very much touched by the names you give, they are all very poetic and phylosophical, such as: Aesthetics of the disappearance, Addresses of Impossible Places, etc.

Y:Thanks, this is exactly how I give names, I hope they are all poetic and acromatic. Nature, Fear, Entity is too big to deal with. While I do agree with the pain sources, inevitably it exists in every personal experience, but I won’t give any detailed clue, but to understand the experience in a macro respect, and transform it into creation. Each individual owns a unique identification, very often even multiple identifications; when I step backward to see what’s going on behind all these appearance, that could be completely different story. We can be constantly stimulated by incidents and to think about life and death, sense and sensation, right or wrong etc., but among all these inverses, either side is stand of ourselves. The starting point of my thinking is always somewhere inbetween, or even parallel, only so can you observe and understand more clearly, then move forward to explain. For me, transformation is a key method, sometimes when you see some scenes or chapters, seems like impossible to happen in the reality, but after a while when you think backward, probably you would feel that’s exactly how they should/originally are, an apperance after transformation. So transform becomes a very important channel to connect the interconnectness of things, to unseal some questions you would like to discuss; this is why I like to apply it often.

T:About transformation, have you influenced by the Dutch Surrealism? As Zhenhua noted in his curatial statement, your visual expression is very much design-stylised with particular persperctive and mathematical horizon, and solidize the visual materials into objects, like they can acutally grow outside of the flat. Particularly with some installations, you create this space functions like a labyrinth derived from digital manipulations of vision composed of images, installations, lineary and videos. I believe there’s a sense connection with Maurits Cornelis Escher.

Y:Right, for M.C. Escher, he’s definitely a genius to creat those graphics and his unique retrospective, of course influenced a lot latercomers, some of them are inspired, but more are repeating. He is a big child for me and he plays really well with visual. But what I going after, not only visually, but more a vision with narration. To be narrative along with the vision. Like mentioned before, I stand in where I am and to divergence and reflect the concepts.

T:That’s why you apply quite a lot mirroring? To vision the other side of ourselves. And art can do exactly the same job, we always see what we’ve been seeing, but never really think about how it happened. The hybrid of the animate and the inanimate become this magical communication.

Y:Exactly, after such a long time of creation, mirroring is another good instrument for my expression.

L:For me I suppose there’re three stages to see his works: first, for all audience who firstly see his works would commonly feel the sence of “dream”, can link to the Inception, think it’s somehow weird; secondly, especially for some video professionals, they think his video works are quite excellent; then his synthesized solution for the space. You can see these linearies all processed by computing but remains simple: one line spread through from the video work into the space. As well he doesn’t apply real people or narrative stories, only with digital 3D, in this way it simplied the narration itself and prevent ambiguity, to express purely the emotion. He’s unique for the without-consideration of violence or porn etc. so-called moral standards but simply with gestures and thought, very core and pure. By cancel the total identification, the physical figure he creates is just a figure, so to clearify better the topics.

T:Read from a comment says your works “reveal a fascination with internal landscapes of the mind”, I agree very much for the subconsciousness carries in your work with metaphorical pyschological meaning. Your works reminds me a friend from Columbia who was once mental disorder during her stay in Shanghai, she stopped eating and could constantly take shower over 30 times cuz she wanted to made herself disappear; she could recognize people without knowing which role they hold in her life; but meanwhile she told me there was a period she was “de-personalized”, she walked on a street and saw a middle-age, she was there but she “knew” she was the lady, or she saw a dog sleeping in the corner, and she “knew” she was exactly the dog. For me maybe it’s somehow cool, as recently she retuned back in Shanghai for a short visit, “recovered” and sounds great, while still miss that period, since she probably would never have the same feeling, to be “dans de vide”(empteness) and unspeakable. The interconnectioness of the elements in your artworks somehow relies on the “soul”(魂灵 by Li) of the general, the usually-not-recognizable life. In your images, everything seems not where they are but they are exactly where they are.Have you been researching in this field?

Y:Yes, usually you put first look on my works you would feel weird, strange, mis-positioned, but when you look back again, probably you would feel it’s exactly how it is/should be! In my blog Art, Sex and Mathematics there’re a lot psychological book notes and writings. I read a lot books related with psychology, phylosophy and even science. The thing is you need to very careful to not cross the line. Go through the art history, there’re too much samples for genius and madness, but I know clearly I’m just by the side of the line, if notcareful, probably I’m already in the other side of. We need to know how to control. Like your friend, I’m surprised she even miss the feeling, even I could probably understand her one hundred percent. I hold very high respectation towards people like that, what I see is an individual thirsty to think and get sunk by it, this topic is talked with my works too. I also have discussion with some fellow scientists friends, read some theorical articles, there’re some points in it quite fascinating, but not often can be absorbed in my works.

T:Right, mathematics is beautiful! Like the Benoit B. Mandelbrot fractal.

Y:Yes, I know him, fractal is quite amazing. But I won’t say I can apply much from science, only few points can really involve me in.

T:In the curatial statement of Zhenhua, who said the theme of this project is to research the relationship inbetween time, scene and seeing from your artwork. What you think about this relationship in your creation before you got this project?

Y:Actually this project is very special for me. Because usually it takes me months to prepare, let’s say 6 months for one piece of work. Before long ago Zhenhua talked with me about the idea to do this project, we talked about different proposals, ways to do it, how to show the scene etc. Since the limitation of the schedule, as well I had several projects on hand before, so it’s impossible to create a new piece for this time; even for me, of course I wish to create something new for each time. So now the video works and the wall graphics you see are all not new. But what’s interesting is actually this project can be devided into two parts: one is the works you see already now, they are from my previous ideas and creations, even though they are not really from one series, so more or less I rearrange the composition, while still they are comparatively mature; the other part involves a dialogue together with the curator and the students, so the beginning of this exhibition is also the beginning of creation. In this open process, the 15 students from SIVA and Zhenhua will discuss altogether from the very original idea to specific operations. This is what attracts me in this project, as well for Zhenhua, cuz the students no more simply sidewatcher but as core creators themselves. But in the past few days, I see more problems than I imagined: with communications and translations. For the part finished was ok, they only need to draw following the projection of my graphics on the wall, while already they don’t really understand since only one or two of them speak a little bit English, I have to explain 4 or 5 times to make sure they understand what they need to do. Zhenhua is not always here and apart he don’t suppose this is his job, I need to figure out by myself. Still not only the problem of language, also about authorization, the students don’t have the right to do anything even though they are capabal of, they need someone who knows about the Minsheng space, the university and communicate with me. This is a bit bothering for me, I usually work alone: drawing, digiting, annimation and all those technique processes. But now a bunch of people await me to give options, I’m a bit lost. While from tomorrow there’s a meeting room set for us to discuss in details how to approach the rest project. Of course I like this openess, it’s a brand new experience for me, definitely I can get some inspirations from it and transform some new in my next work. But as the concern I told at the beginning to Zhenhua, this type of exploresive projects carry too much unknown incidents, it’s absolutely different from the usual way of my work. He as the curator treat this project different, for him to discover the live scene and open involvement for the audience are very interesting, but still it requires a more specific creteria for him, a very clear starting point to find an artist ideal for the one. Any way, I’m very happy to be here to be part of the project, and as Zhenhua said, it’s the point attracts me after all. Through the process, I’ll dig deeper for the relationship among time, scene and seeing too.

L:We got to know each other from Beijing, the 2008 Media Art China. I was the chief executive, so I got to communicate with all the artists in a very operational way, to dig some micro problems and fix a solution for it. Of course I knew his work long before we actually met by then. By the end of 2008, I moved to Zurich, found out he lives near to my resident, so we got to dine together often. After he shown me his catalogue, and I’ve always been thinking to curate a deep exhibition project for him. For this occation in Shanghai, it won’t be meaningful to do a “huge” exhibition but to decode his creation through inviting the public and media and so on to get involved on behalf of the basics of his work. Let in the observation towards a variety of aspects: technique, concept etc. This actually very much reflect a principle of my job: What can be acknowledged should be explained more clearly, what can not be acknowledged should be figured out. The origins of this line are not alone, a lot writes, phylosophers have said it, the reason is it’s exactly the purpose of all our works: art, projects, research to figure things more clear, the clearer the better. Of course naturally the appearance or expression can be more complicated. Take a probably not proper parable as in the medicine, obliged to understand how the main organs work so as to understand those nerves. Like Yves said, this project is interesting since there’s this involvement from the students, and I believe they are the future artists. So speaking to the method of working etc., through this project they can get some pioneer infos international which is helpful. They are students of Hu jieming from different majors: new media, photographer, video & filming etc. Currently they do some simple stuff according to the instructions from the artist, in the following days they’ll have the opportunity to suggest their ideas.

T: What was also interesting for the timing: the vernissage is actually the beginning of the creation, and the two-week duration of the exhibition is a constantly presenting and transforming procedure. The scene witness the process of the transformation from the invisable thought to objects i.e. visual materials and presentations. As seeing become the witness itself, like wandering around. How to understand this way of Seeing?

L:When you are in the spaces he creates, the axis and perspective of visual make you feel like inside a labyrinth, but still there’s one line to connect everything. Although you just need to be casual like wandering in a garden, in a beautiful and relaxing atmosphere.

T:Right, like Ariadne help Theseus with a ball of red fleece thread to get the way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, Yves gives a clue as well.

L:If you observe carefully, the materials and methods he applies are quite simple, this point interested me. Today’s contemporary arts very often go after how massive, expensive or many people involved, but is just opposite in his work. The gamelike playfulness enlights the experience to be in his space, or somehow back into everyday life which on behalf of the basis of museology.

T: In some site commissioned works, the space you creat can be indistinguishable whether is interiol or outdoor, and use a lot wall to even make them no more wall and to be sth, breakable to link the outside space inside. As Zhenhua mentioned the MinSheng Art Space was founded by the MinSheng Bank. How you take consideration of the space where exhibite your artwork, especially when it’s a commissioned work which you need to creat onsite like this time? Previously examples like the Das Reservat der Nachteile(Kunstmuseum Bern, Schweiz) and one of my favorites, the Inventories of Abstraction committed by the Courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi(Firenze, Italy).

Y: Of course you need a very comprehensive system of knowledge when you accept a commission job. Talk about space, Minsheng is quite ideal, but still there’re some objective elements need to be get familiar with. Generally I hope I can hold one idea, and then to explore the space as well as materials. Like the “library” project I made for Piazza Strozzi, and for Kunstmuseum Bern, especially for the latter one, they are a very historical museum, comparatively very traditional too; when they knew I was going to make something completely new, they were actually not very happy, they prefer I would do something more retrospective.

First of all, I’ll work on the space aesthetically, give a specific meaning which enable the viewers to think about; then work on every aspects of the space, include sound(my sound partner, artist Bernd Schurer), how the objects move in the film, animation, graphics, installation etc., to embrace the viewers inside, to feel profoundly. Then the devotion of time and fund sometimes. Truly speaking my work is not very sellable, you can see its systematics: with image, annimation, installation, space-scene etc. Currently I do all the techinique jobs alone, sometimes I woud hire some people to help. Generally it’s difficult now, I have to admit the condition of my art creation changes the way of my life.

T:How about your gallery then, they do any help?

Y:Not at all. I don’t know the condition here in China, though. Maybe some bigger scale or better arranged galleries would help more, e.g. pay my journey and accomondation for this project. But my gallery is a very small one, let’s say they don’t have at all the mood to do anything. I do everything by myself, and try very hard to pay the bills. Maybe I’m not in the best position yes, maybe I have to change it. You must know artists would always like to have some opportunities to exhibite, like this time, but even this project has nothing to do with the gallery. Well I understand galleries want to represent some artists who are more sellable, to earn money. But now if I think backwards, I would feel lucky for myself that when I was young there was no big gallery came to me and get me in a more popular position to produce more works to sell; so as I have been able to accumulate some time and spaces of thinking and self-observation as well to reach this deep of my creation. Although now maybe is the time to think about change the gallery and etc. The condition here is different from in Europe I guess.

T:The contemporary art scenario in China is still a baby, not yet set up a systematic structure. While these days Zhenhua plans to bring you to visit some local artists and institutes, right? Then you’ll have a instant impression about.

L:Yes, we went to visit ShangArt had a long converstion with Lorenz Helbing yesterday, afterwards we plan to visit some artists studio,to have direct exchanges with some local artists. Like Liu Wei, now he has a solo show here in Minsheng parallelly exhibited with Yves, next Sunday we’ll hold a lecture to talk about the relationship between production and creation in the contemporary art scenario. I have some artists friends here, so easier to get through. Today the foundor of a gallery from Hangzhou called Inart came to visit Yves’s work, together with a fellow graffitt artist Chen Fandong, they are the only one gallery for me in Hangzhou which represent quite some brilliant young artists, another sample is Cheng Ran, a video artist. So maybe I’ll go with Yves to Hangzhou pay some visits there.

T:In some of your graphic and vedio works, I see this light come from outwhere and drop on the center figure, the melody of the way we were sings next to my ear: memories light the corners of my mind. More or less, memories never gone away. How you play memories in your works? And dreams? Most of the critiques about your works would say they are “dreamy”. What you usually see in your dreams? They are film-like? How you re-present the dreams in your works?

Y:Wow, this is kind of personal. I don’t know where to start, but memories and dreams can be more or less projected in my works that’s for sure. The tracks from the past, my daydreams and nightmears, all behind my works I guess. But I will not insert like that, but going through digestion to final presentation.

T:Even you mentioned usually you work alone, but in your biography I saw several co-operation with other artists, even in comparatively different fields. For example, the project Aufräumarbeiten im Wasserfall you collaborate with the dancer/choreographer Anna Huber.

be I have to change it. You must know artists would always like to have some opportunities to exhibite, like this time, but even this project has nothing to do with the gallery. Well I understand galleries want to represent some artists who are more sellable, to earn money. But now if I think backwards, I would feel lucky for myself that when I was young there was no big gallery came to me and get me in a more popular position to produce more works to sell; so as I have been able to accumulate some time and spaces of thinking and self-observation as well to reach this deep of my creation. Although now maybe is the time to think about change the gallery and etc. The condition here is different from in Europe I guess.

T:The contemporary art scenario in China is still a baby, not yet set up a systematic structure. While these days Zhenhua plans to bring you to visit some local artists and institutes, right? Then you’ll have a instant impression about.

L:Yes, we went to visit ShangArt had a long converstion with Lorenz Helbing yesterday, afterwards we plan to visit some artists studio,to have direct exchanges with some local artists. Like Liu Wei, now he has a solo show here in Minsheng parallelly exhibited with Yves, next Sunday we’ll hold a lecture to talk about the relationship between production and creation in the contemporary art scenario. I have some artists friends here, so easier to get through. Today the foundor of a gallery from Hangzhou called Inart came to visit Yves’s work, together with a fellow graffitt artist Chen Fandong, they are the only one gallery for me in Hangzhou which represent quite some brilliant young artists, another sample is Cheng Ran, a video artist. So maybe I’ll go with Yves to Hangzhou pay some visits there.

Y:Haha, it’s extremly interesting and challenge to work with Anna, somehow like a battle.(smile) She has very strong personality, knows exactly what she want to do and how to do, so it’s always difficult to put something different from what she usually do. While that’s just the interesting part, isn’t it? We constantly arguing with small things. Like I mentioned before, to decide the name was another fight.(smile) Aufräumarbeiten im Wasserfall means purify in the waterfall, I made it. She wasn’t satisfied, she prefer very “big” names. You visited her website you know she give always very “big” names like Time or Universe which I can not handle, and I think is impossible to narrate well. Usually I need a very poetic, comparatively specific reference. Well afterall it’s a wonder experience definitely. The impulses, rules and limits of figurative movement in real, imaginary and synthetic space are mixed up and used to test new semantic fields. Vulnerable and immediate in its physical presence, the human body is simultaneously an instrument and object of research. In its complex transformations, traditional systems of orientation shift and bend into three dimensional structures. The gap between the possible and impossible becomes the laboratory for moments rich in associations.

T:After this co-operation, you melt a bit more body language into your work? For example I saw some gestures of Yoga or contemporary dance in your videowork.

Y:Maybe yes, but not much. I reall appreciate the beauty of how Anna apply the body language, well still she communicate in a different way than me I guess.

T:Finally, let’s talk about your journey to China. It’s not the first time you been in China. Zhenhua said you came to Beijing 2008. Now in Shanghai. How you like this country?

Y:Unfortunately I didn’t see much. Was only four or five days, most of time we spent in the exhibition talking about how to coordinate, so didn’t have anytime to look around. This time is better in Shanghai, I’ve got a bit more than half month, so I believe can do some visits around. But still, in the past few days I spent here doing the installation, didn’t go out at all.

T:About further projects, you’ve got some idea already?

Y:Lol, not really.(Smile) While definitely the experience from this one will help me to get some new inspirations which I could probably use for my next one. But of course I’ll spend some time to tidy up.

Biography

Yves Netzhammer, born in 1970, studied Visual Design at the Zurich College of Art and Design. Since 1997, he has been working on a widely ramified, poetic imagery cosmos. His video installations, objects, slide shows and drawings fascinate through their bodily charisma and their formal clarity. The playful recombination of elements which seemingly can not be combined leads to the threshold of our existence’s dark side: Dulcet aspects interlock with displeasing ones, the dead melts with the alive into creatures never seen before, and the depicted scenarios run from microscopic to giant scales.

Solo exhibitions include SFMOMA, San Francisco (2008), Venice Biennale (2007), Karlskirche Kassel (supporting program documenta 12, 2007), Museum Rietberg, Zürich (2006), Kunsthalle Bremen (2005) and Helmhaus Zürich (2003). Group exhibitions include Chelsea Art Museum, New York (2008), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2007), Witte de With and TENT, Rotterdam (2006), Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (2006) and National Gallery Prague (2005). Among others, he was awarded the Swiss Art Award in 2006, the Landis & Gyr-Grant for London in 2005 and a studio scholarship from the city of Zurich for New York in 2001. Yves Netzhammer lives and works in Zurich.

Website：http://www.netzhammer.com

More works by Yves Netzhammer

Yves Netzhammer, 2007, Switzerland, Multimedia Installation

[In Yves Netzhammer’s special] […] installation […] drawing, architecture, video projection and soundtracks all interact. […] With its dynamic line drawings and stippling via sight and sound attractors, it multiplies the experience of space and time and articulates a sophisticated relationship between picture, movement and narrative. […] [In ‘The Subjectivisation of Repetition’] “the alien” appears in the form of repressed, psychological subject matter, unseen body innards, shadow bodies, different skin colours and signs of cultural otherness. The coalescence of these motifs creates unusual relationships of self and alien, individual case and universal problem, in an effort to overcome reduction to opposing dualities and provoke discussion of the mechanisms of self-localisation. […]

In Netzhammer’s gauging/searching approach, the “world” does not appear as an available, negotiable mass, but as a complex other with a dignity of its own. This impression arises from the specific relationship between form and movement. The processes intimated in Netzhammer’s drawings and the gestures that appear in his video films generate a very specific impression of physicality. The picture experience transmits a sense of possible materiality, a heightened sensitivity to its significance. Insofar as Netzhammer’s works allow the paradoxical “possibility of an impossible touch” to be experienced, they also sharpen the senses to the phenomena of the material world whilst respecting their incomprehensibility — wonders that can never be understood or described in their entirety. The artist implements this extension and conservation of a multiplicity of world phenomena through precise handling of recalcitrant signs and through subtle composition that informs his pictures with a sensitivity to the world. “Figuration” and “form” in Netzhammer’s œuvre mean the exact demarcation and appreciation of impressions — impressions of incomprehensible and alien circumstances —that should be promised a place in our culture to help influence its boundaries.

(Excerpt from Tim Zulauf: Media release by Swiss federal office of culture, May 2007 on the occasion of Yves Netzhammer’s exhibition in the Venice Biennale 2007)

Soundtrack by Bernd Schurer;Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers

Yves Netzhammer, Furniture of Proportions, 2008,in SFMOMA

Preparatory sketch for drawing and animation to be included in mixed media and multi-channel color video installation with sound

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

When it comes to finding an appropriate visual medium with which to communicate internal pictures, feelings and emotions, the computer is still the most important instrument for Yves Netzhammer. But the cool and sober language of this medium is by no means due to the artist’s fascination with the artificial; it is more like a tool of neutralisation that is capable of revealing universal structures and processes behind contingent reality. The innumerable variations that come to life as animations and computer drawings mark associative fields that condense and form themselves into a complicated net of references within the draft process. The way this net materialises into a form starts from the computer drawings and leads to sculptures, murals and complex installations. As in most of Netzhammer’s shows, also in ‘Addresses of Impossible Places’ an animated video is the core of the whole show; but the sculptures and installations develop some aspects of the animation further and recontextualise them as three-dimensional spatial arrangements. Whereas the neutral language of the computer animation makes the individual human being lose some of their unique features (and gain some universal ones at the same time), the objects and even whole landscapes become animated in the truest sense of the word. They become capable of engaging in a direct dialogue with human beings or else they turn into material representations of human longings, fears and wishes.