The art of Séverin Guelpa circles around social, ecological and political challenges against the background of technological and territorial developments. With his mostly site-specific objects and installations, performances and collaborative projects, he probes possibilities of future coexistence within this field of tension. To this end, he often seeks out extreme landscapes – such as the Mojave Desert or the Aletsch Glacier – or sites of urban change.
Arbon, with its industrial history and proximity to Lake Constance, is also of particular interest to him. The project he has developed for the old factory hall of the Arbon art center is a poetic and eerily beautiful reflection on the interaction between progress and decline: the Kunsthalle is bathed in darkness and atmospheric sounds. Dimly lit, a mysterious, building-like structure rises in the center, above a mirror-smooth surface of water. Is it first emerging or sinking? The title, Subsidence of Growth, suggests the latter….
Deborah Keller, Kuratorin Kunsthalle Arbon
