Ron Temperli and Dominik Heim

Isle of Silence

May 21 – July 2 2006

As in earlier works, the two young Swiss artists Ron Temperli (b. 1975) and Dominik Heim (b. 1975) play with selfmade replica of reality. In the main hall of the Kunsthalle they build a black mountain that looks like a small scale model but at the same time like a gigantic miniature. A little landing stage leads to the mountain and turns into a path leading to the top of it.
In the adjacent hall the bird's-eye view turns into the scale of 1:1. A lawn made of meticulously cut out cardboard streches out in front of the visitor; the path that appeared so tiny on the mountain in the main hall is now ready to be walked on. Like the melancholic and sombre atmosphere of the whole exhibition, the change of perspective is a reference to German Romanticism. In the art theory of the time the spectator was not only facing the artwork as an object but completed it with his individual imagination. Walking into the artpiece and becoming physically part of it mirrors this concept of art perception that has remained a self-evident part of contemporary art ever since.

Oliver Kielmayer