In early September 2018, Ursula Palla (*1961) moved into the Guest Studio of the Sitterwerk for a stay lasting several weeks.
The Swiss artist studied drawing and painting at the F+F Schule für Kunst und Mediendesign in Zurich and then taught classes in video art there. Since 1992 she has participated regularly in exhibitions both within and outside of the country. During her stay at Sitterwerk, she is working on a new work cycle.
Ursula Palla makes videos, which she frequently expands into spatial installations in combination with objects. In these video installations, she is engaging with the interfaces between space, sculpture, material, and virtual reality in order to challenge or probe the laws of perception and time, but also her own artistic means. Oftentimes playing a central role here are change and transience, usually activated by interaction with outside influences—such as the movements of the viewer or a shift in wind and sun.
The Swiss artist, who resides in Zurich, discovers content-related points of reference in various places, such as in art history with artists like Alberto Giacometti or Claude Monet. Also serving as a source of inspiration are societal contexts, the genesis of exhibition sites, or anecdotes from daily life. For instance, the woman who hid her fortune under a mattress and did not realize until years later that ants had neatly shredded all of the banknotes into tiny pieces and carried them away to their anthill. Or the last city gardener of Aleppo, whose great dream it was, even during the war, to visit Monet’s garden in Giverny. For Ursula Palla, such occurrences at times mark the beginning of heightened fascination and intense research, densifying over the course of the artistic process into images that captivate though a reduced sense of directness and also poetic sensuousness. The studied object of Ursula Palla’s inquiring spirit is not only the human being, but most especially the delicate relationship between nature and artificiality, as well as the interaction among the two.
Open Studio
Friday, October 5, 2018
starting at 6.15pm studios are open, with Apéro
at 7pm, talk with Corinne Schatz in context of the mobile discussion platform LE FOYER – IN PROCESS