 My father in front of the Landis & Gyr Company, Switzerland Costa Vece Costa Vece (Swiss born in 1969), internationally known after his participation in the 1999 Venice Biennale, is back for his second one man show in the gallery after 2001. The first impact of Costa Vece was with cardboard, recycled materials, with a sense of precariousness. Therefore, looking at it in a superficial way, his work seems to reclaim surperfluous materials. After entering in his environment, however, one can discover a different world, full of intimacy, of memories, of subtle and articulated thinking. Vece used to work in vegetables warehouses to earn money for his studies. In those places you handle lots of boards, carton boxes and wooden crates, so those were the materials he ended up working with. He generally builds the "shell" first, whether it is a cave, a tent or a sailing ship, just a place the user can get into. Then he tries to create a feeling inside this shape. That's why, even though the external part might seem very filthy, the internal part must be a really pleasent environment, an other world you would have never expected to enter. He just wants to convey a flavour, and the feeling that you could never live inside a "white cube", inside an aseptic gallery or museum. A friend of his once said: "Costa tends to recreate a mother". This statement might be the key to Costa Vece's preocupation in art. Vece's parents came for work to Switzerland, his father from southern Italy and his mother from Greece. They met in Switzerland where they married. For years they moved from factory to factory where they got a job. They experienced a tipical life as a "Gastarbeiter – Guest worker" in Switzerland, which meant to be rather suffered then accepted. When his parents got a divorce after some years, Costa Vece was taken away from his family and put into a boarding home. Vece answered to the question of Gigiotto Del Vecchio (interview in boilermagazin, January 27, 2002): "Why do you always refer to your growing up, to your teens, to your family?" Vece: "For sure because I miss that. I think my personal history can never be separated from my work, because it has a very strong influence upon it or is directly part of it". For his exhibition, Costa Vece will construct a "shell". By entering it you will be confronted with Vece's research on his father's first years in Switzerland as a "Gastarbeiter" (videos, photographs and sculptures). On the photograph you see his father in front of the building of the company Landis & Gyr in central Switzerland, where he once worked. Peter Kilchmann is also pleased to invite you for the inauguration of the second gallery space "kilchmann plus". This space (100 m2) which is located next to the gallery will be used as a viewing room or as project space or as the extention of the gallery space, following the needs. The first exhibition will be with artists of the gallery, "part I"; Francis Alÿs, Melanie Smith, Teresa Margolles, Claudia & Julia Müller and Santiago Sierra. Ausstellungsdauer: 23.8. - 4.10.2003 Oeffnungszeiten: Di/Mi/Fr 12 -18 Uhr, Do 12 - 20 Uhr, Sa 11 -16 Uhr Galerie Peter Kilchmann Limmatstrasse 270 CH-8005 Zürich Telefon +41 1 440 39 31 Fax +41 1 440 39 32 E-Mail info@kilchmanngalerie.com www.kilchmanngalerie.com |
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