“Heroic nihilism means to face up to the hopelessness of reality and, in spite of all desperation about it, never to surrender. In addition a radicalization of the personal idea of reality and its perception is inevitable” – explains Lori Hersberger.
Gallery Nicola von Senger is pleased to present new works by this Swiss artist who counts as his mainspring desperation about the world in all its facets. His works are not a comment on the reality of everyday life: social fears, compulsions or general economic crises are not the influences of his practice. In the centre of his work the individual and existential questions stand. At the beginning of his artistic career Hersberger borrowed from a variety of media but for the past 10 years he has concentrated primarily on sculpture and painting. He often uses mirrors and neon lights, elements that he sees as illustrating the basic conditions of our perception; light letting us recognise contrasts, the mirror reflecting the world as it is. For Hersberger, even if the mirror shows with the reflected real a deception, in the end, it represents what we call reality.
Where does reality end and deception begin? Hersberger’s art revolves around this question and for its exploration he employs smooth, highly reflective surfaces. The surface, for Hersberger, being the first point for impressions and the interface between inside and outside; rarely does it show us the true content and instead often deceives with a flawless facade. With such reflective materials the artist explores these relationships and illustrates the complexity of the way in which the act of observing and being observed truly functions.
In the current exhibition Hersberger presents a series of photographic collages and different sculptures. Among them a neon light wall piece and a chrome steel sculpture titled ‘Sudden Death’. This shining, misshapen, chrome work makes clear the technical and artistic process between chance and purpose; vacuuming with a suction-compressor deforms the geometrical shape of an airtight welded-metal body, the transformation takes place within a second. The air is sucked out completely; the material gives way at its weakest point and breaks. Thus, the existing form is moved into another shape and the intervention is irreversible, the result is not repeatable.
Exemplary for his oeuvre this process, along with the use of light and reflection, show the artist’s interest lying with carefully thought out deformation and not destruction. His work is decidedly about control, specifically the control of loss, nuances and moments of perception. For Hersberger the putative desire for destruction as an antidote to the desperation of reality can be perceived as a surface deception.
