The Lucerne-based artist, musician and filmmaker Davix has a long-standing friendship and collaboration with message salon. Since 1995, Davix has been repeatedly invited to exhibit at various locations of the message salon, most recently in 2012 at Perla-Mode. Now Davix and message salon are returning to Langstrasse together.
In the new exhibition series “Die message salon Diele” in the shop window of the art space “Die Diele”, Davix presents an installation with paintings from his studio. Davix’ art quotes the abstract-expressive painting of the sixties, the aesthetics of Pop Art, but also the influence of techno, video clips, computer games and graffiti. Abstract, strictly geometric colour fields compete with expressive brushstrokes, patterns, repetition – traces of wear on garish neon scratch the perfect surface.
Painting is the reference and the theme, nature in its most wondrous existence, a universal language of forms and colours. The miracle of life is too complex to comprehend and yet constant repetition in endless variation.
Is painting a kind of microscope? An attempt to magnify this mystery that encompasses life in its entirety – its interiority and its materiality? To depict and somehow understand nature and its irrevocable laws that delimit humans and their psyche?
From the rhythm on the brush to the rhythm of the music. Davix has been a drummer for 30 years, was on the road throughout Switzerland in the 1980s with the legendary Lucerne post-punk band Steven’s Nude Club and is still involved in various band projects today. On Saturday 27 April Davix will play a concert with his current Lucerne-based jazz punk band “Loren” in the immediate vicinity of the shop window, in the charming allotment garden “2-2=0” behind the seven railway tracks at Schöneggplatz in Zurich Aussersihl. On this occasion the message salon embassy Zine No. 16 “Tracks” by Davix will be released in a limited edition.
“Die message salon Diele”
After the end of Perla-Mode, Esther Eppstein’s desire to be present again with a message salon exhibition program in the Zurich art scene and on Langstrasse led her to Livio Baumgartner, the long-time operator of the shop-window art space “Die Diele” in district 4.
The shop-windows of “Die Diele” on Sihlhallenstrasse are ideally suited, the window in public space offers a platform in the lively surroundings of Langstrasse. The vernissage will take place on the pavement in front of the shop windows and in the entrance of the Sihlhallenstrasse 4 commercial building, after which the window will be open around the clock until the end of the exhibition.
With the exhibition series “Die message salon Diele”, “message salon” and “Die Diele” join forces and resources and co-operate against fragmentation and isolation in the art scene. The “message salon Diele” is a commitment to artist-run space as an independent, experimental free space and as an alternative to the increasingly institutionalized and commercialized art establishment of our time.
“Die message salon Diele”, Sihlhallenstrasse 4, 8004 Zurich
The exhibition in the shop window is open around the clock
“Die message salon Diele” 2019
Davix (CH) 18 April to 25 May
Gorod Ustinov (Russia) 25 July to 18 August
Ed Young (South-Africa) 22 August to 30 September
message salon thanks Livio Baumgartner (Die Diele), Monika Schori and Patrick Hollenstein (2-2=0), 25hours Hotel Langstrasse Zurich