FABRICE GYGI

In 2010, Fabrice Gygi initiates a rupture in his work by abandoning the practice of installations in favour of sculpture. First, though the creation of jewellery, which lasted several years. Radically new in construction, with basic geometrical shapes, these pieces are driven by a determination to strip the object of all sensuality. Likewise, the volumes of his newest sculptural works and bas-reliefs, modular combinations of cubes and rectangular cuboids, or parallelepipeds, abolish the curve and the oblique, adopting the elegance and purity of abstract lines. The golden ratio applies to the sculpture whose articulated cubes are assembled in a decreasing order. The interplays of scale and shape, of full and hollow, and of positive and negative spaces, are evocative of architectural prototypes.

Fabrice Gygi composes his watercolours with horizontal and vertical lines. After several months spent in Marfa, in the Chihuahua desert, he starts exploring the complexities of lines. Rejecting the curve, they obey the same rules of form he previously applied to his sculptures. Discipline and determination are the key words. Painted in a single stroke in overlapping layers, they attest to an extreme tension in execution and to the artist’s search for a harmony between concentration and rigidity, an effort to achieve ideal self control in wielding the brush. Each piece exists in a state of absolute balance between perfection and accident, creating a constant energy intensified by the living. These large watercolours offer a range strictly confined to six hues, extended to variations determined by the artist. We can retrace the roots emblematic of Gygi’s practice, as he emphasises the inherent power of an object by distilling it to its most minimal essence.

Biography

Major institutional exhibitions by Fabrice Gygi (born in 1965 in Geneva, Switzerland) include the Instituto Svizzero di Roma (2010), Orange County Museum of Art (2005), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2005) and MAMCO Geneva (2004). His work was placed in the center of group shows in several international institutions such as the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2017), Migros Museum (2016), Kunsthaus Zurich (2015), Swiss Institute New York (2015), Palais de Tokyo (2011), Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (2007), Museum Ludwig (2005), Museo Nacional Reina Sofia (2003), 25th Biennial of Ljubljana (2003), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2000), Kunsthalle Bern (1996). He represented Switzerland at the 2009 Venice Biennale and at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2002.

His work was acquired by numerous collections including the MAMCO in Geneva, the Mudac in Lausanne and the Migros Museum in Zurich (Switzerland); the M KHA in Antwerp (Belgium); the Magasin 3 in Stockholm (Sweden); the Centre Pompidou and the FRAC Ile de France in Paris, the FRAC Haute-Normandie in Rouen and the Centre national des arts plastiques (France).

After teaching at the ECAL in Lausanne, one of the ten best art and design schools in the world, Fabrice Gygi is now a professor at the Haute École d’art et de design (HEAD) in Geneva.