The Zurich artist Kerim Seiler and the Hamburg artist Oliver Ross have been friends for many years. The two spent time studying together in Hamburg, worked as neighbours at the workspace of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Zürcher Bildhauer in Schlieren and have stimulated networking between the Hamburg and Zurich art scenes with exhibitions and reciprocal invitations. At Perla-Mode, they are now bringing their latest works together for the first time in a large, joint exhibition.
The two artists are showing painting, sculpture and graphic art on three floors. Oliver Ross’s painting detaches itself from the wall and becomes a walk-in sculpture. In a frenzy of colour and material, it takes you on a joyful hellish ride through the twists and turns of a psychedelically charged state of consciousness. Kerim Seiler’s inflatable sculpture “Alice” crawls from the underground of the cellar to the ground floor. On the terrace of Perla-Mode, Kerim Seiler has installed “Pneuma, somnambul”, a nocturnal spatial structure that rises up into the night sky in clear strokes of colour on Langstrasse. Oliver Ross and Kerim Seiler emphasise similarities and differences in their selection of works.
While Kerim Seiler’s choice of materials draws on the tradition of constructivist art and Arte Povera, Oliver Ross pays homage to American art of the 1960s with his paintings and uses this heritage with relish in the manner of neo-hippie post-punk trash to create a subtly ironic statement about the dilemma of an art-historically over-informed contemporary artist.
Painting becomes sculpture, sculpture becomes painting, at this intersection the two artists, who work very differently, find themselves in their joint exhibition “Oliver Ross and Kerim Seiler exhibit”.