25 Years Anniversary
The Swiss artist duo Com & Com (Marcus Gossolt / Johannes M. Hedinger), founded in 1997, is showing a selection of works from all phases of their creativity as well as two completely newly developed groups of works for their 25th anniversary.
BAUM 4 (2022) is a new three-part tree work. Not only have Com & Com been traveling around the world with a tree trunk for over 10 years (Bloch, 2011-), since 2010 they have also dug up several trees and all their roots and staged them in art spaces as Natural Ready Mades. These filigree structures are astonishing again and again when they make visible what branched and complex cosmos opens up underground.
Opposite these hanging trees, WALD (2022) is a second new group of works made of carpets with forest motifs, which were developed in collaboration with Martin Leuthold, textile designer and former creative director of Jakob Schlaepfer (known for their haute couture and prêt- à Porter fabrics). There are beguiling photo mandalas and collages of forest floors with repetitively arranged elements of wood, leaves, grass, feathers and bones. The large-format photo carpets are mainly shown as floor works, smaller formats also on the wall.
In the second room of the gallery, a small retrospective with 25 works – drawings, photos, graphics, paintings, objects and sculptures – from the last 25 years invites you to review the work of Com & Com and how it has changed over time. This overview is supplemented by a selection of videos and publications from three decades.
At the end of the year 2022, a sequel to Com & Com’s first catalog of works from 2010 (Lexicon of Contemporary Art) has been announced. This second part offers for the first time a complete overview of the oeuvre of the last 12 creative years as well as a selection of texts from the same period.
The anniversary exhibition is the eighth solo exhibition by the artist collective Com & Com, which has been represented by Galerie Bernhard Bischoff & Partner for 16 years.