Nistplätze für Berührungen: This poetic title takes the designator for the place where animals grow up together in a family setting and links it to the intimate gesture of touch. Yet this combination of familiar notions intimates surreal worlds such as could not be more characteristic for the oeuvre of Zurich media artist Yves Netzhammer, born in Affoltern am Albis in 1970. Nistplätze, one of his important early installations, was first presented in 2006 in Museum Rietberg and most recently gifted to Kunst Museum Winterthur. It will now be showcased in the context of the Winterthur collection and enter into dialog with the equally enigmatic interiors by Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard.

150 digital drawings, projected onto three fabric-covered volumes, transform the exhibition space into a magical world. Spatial sculpture and cabinet of drawings rolled into one, the overlap of the individual drawings as projected evolve a film-like sequence. In this early piece we can discern key creative elements of Netzhammer’s artistic output. Starting from what is essentially an approach based on drawing, he develops complex and expansive installations with spatialized sequences of images in which we can only too easily lose ourselves.

Ever since he took part in the Venice Biennale in 2007, his multimedia oeuvre has been recognized world-wide, as is demonstrated by solo shows and participation in group exhibitions in Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, at the Kiev Biennale and that in Shenzhen. Nistplätze marks the beginning of his international career and in the context of the Winterthur collection builds a bridge between the rich tradition of drawings and the current worlds of digital images.

Curator: Konrad Bitterli