Yves Netzhammer

Yves Netzhammer’s works for the 52nd Venice Biennial and the exhibition accompanying the documenta 12 in 2007 drew international attention. The artist (*1970 in Schaffhausen) creates complex, disturbing visual worlds that incorporate many references to art history and are permeated with drawing, architecture, computer-generated video images, and sound. People, animals, plants, and objects constantly flow into each other, transforming into new, mysterious creatures. The pleasant dovetails with the unpleasant; the dead melts into the living. According to the artist, he uses his works to look for the images everyone has in his own head, without knowing it. “It’s about the chance an image has in a world ruled by comprehension,” and “searching for the patterns of our perception, for this hidden, parallel system where our desires, fears, prejudices, and ambivalences are concealed.”

Richly illustrated, the book documents Netzhammer’s latest works—the installations for Venice and Kassel, as well as projects for the Museum Rietberg in Zurich and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art—supplemented by earlier works.