Yves Hänggi

Statement

Graduated from the Biel Cantonal School of Visual Arts and member of the Swiss association of visual artists Visarte, I am a painter and illustrator. My artistic universe is nourished by contemporary drawing, independent comics, free figuration, pop art, popular arts and art brut, influences that I mix through various formats, materials and techniques (acrylic paint, ink, chalk, collage). My work has been exhibited in Switzerland, France, Belgium, the USA and Madagascar, and has been published by several Swiss and French publishers.

Inspired by the plural world around me and by mass culture, I seek to explore certain subterranean facets of the human being in order to bring out and exaggerate its multiple identities. To this end, I play with the notions of accumulation, multiplication, interlacing, overlapping or even overexposure, echoing the entanglement and the labyrinthine meanders of our current society. With my own artistic and metaphorical vocabulary, I weave a network of symbolic and allegorical figures, a jungle of standardized, dehumanized, submissive or robotized characters, interwoven into a frantic and overpopulated saraband.

GlogauAIR Project

The urban culture and environment, the crowds and the agitation of the city are my main sources of inspiration. In particular, it is the urban iconography (promotional posters, specialized magazines, signs) that influences my imagination, leading me to divert its meaning through my personal artistic expression, in order to reinvent on this base a singular universe.

In the continuity of my current work, in resonance and inspiration with the Berlin urban context, I will deepen my pictorial research on larger formats, by mixing paint, ink and collage. I will let myself be influenced by the context of the residency by taking as a basis the cultural diversity specific to the environment as I will be able to perceive it on the spot.

I will be particularly interested in the theme of current and electronic music in Berlin. My pictorial approach and my artistic style are indeed continuously imbued with music, dancing crowd and rhythms and, in this sense, Berlin constitutes for me a ceaseless source of creative inspiration.

My creations will be nourished by the musical atmosphere, by the pulsations of the city, by the atmosphere of the streets, by the density of the crowd, by signs and advertising, by inscriptions and posters, by day and night, by industrial urbanism, or even by train and subway stations, through elements and symbols specific to the city, elements of decor and atmospheres that will intermingle and overlap in entangled compositions.

CV Summary

EDUCATION

• 1984-1989 • Cantonal School of Visual Arts, Bienne, Switzerland, graphic designer diploma

RECENT EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)

• 2020 • Cantonale Berne Jura, group exhibition, Kunsthaus, Steffisburg, Switzerland
• 2020 • Soft Panic, solo exhibition, Le Fuzz, Marseille, France
• 2020 • Six artists in movement, group exhibition, Galerie de l’Artsenal, Delémont, Switzerland
• 2020 • Biennale de Visarte, group exhibition, ancienne usine Condor, Courfaivre, Switzerland
• 2019 • Moving archipelagos, solo exhibition, Galerie de l’Artsenal, Delémont, Switzerland
• 2019 • Jaune Ironie, group exhibition, Galerie E2 Sterput, Bruxelles, Belgium
• 2019 • Drawings, solo exhibition, Is’Art Galerie, Antananarivo, Madagascar
• 2019 • The Chameleon, duo exhibition, French Alliance, Antananarivo, Madagascar
• 2019 • Recent works, solo exhibition, Galerie La Sonnette, Lausanne, Switzerland
• 2019 • Drawings from around the world, solo exhibition, Daily Dish, Washington, USA
• 2018 • Cantonale Berne Jura, group exhibition, Kunsthaus, Interlaken, Switzerland
• 2018 • On the road, solo exhibition, Le Vent des Routes, Genève, Switzerland
• 2018 • Biennale de Visarte, group exhibition, Espace des Fours à Chaux, St-Ursanne, Switzerland
• 2018 • Recent Drawings, group exhibition, Galerie Bertrand Hassoun, Besançon, France
• 2018 • An illustrated world tour, solo exhibition, Cercle de la Voile, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
• 2017 • Organik grafik, solo exhibition, Galerie de la FARB, Delémont, Switzerland
• 2017 • Travel Drawings, solo exhibition, Galerie l’Echappée Belle, Sète, France
• 2017 • From Sète to Saïgon, solo exhibition, Galerie Trouillat, Porrentruy, Switzerland
• 2017 • Draw the world, solo exhibition, Bibliothèque municipale, Belfort, France
• 2016 • Biennale de Visarte, group exhibition, Espace des Fours à Chaux, St-Ursanne, Switzerland
• 2016 • An illustrated world tour, solo exhibition, Musée de l’Hôtel-Dieu, Porrentruy, Switzerland

AWARDS AND EVENTS

• 2020 • Winner of the City of Porrentruy’s 2019 Culture Prize
• 2019 • Presentation tour in Madagascar of the book The Chameleon (with the author Edouard Choffat), at the invitation of the French Alliance (meetings, conferences, readings, artistic workshops)
• 2019 • Literary Prize of the French Alliances of Madagascar for the book The Chameleon (text Edouard Choffat / illustrations Yves Hänggi)
• 2015 • Around the world for six months and creation of 60 drawings in travel notebooks

PUBLICATIONS

• About twenty publications, personal or collective, published in Switzerland and France, notably by the editions Joie Panique, Epox & Botox and Catalpas.

Gallery