10 Swiss Contemporary Artists You Need to Know

Creating new environments within galleries and other institutions, Christoph Büchel leads viewers into a space that often bears no resemblance to its host building. These installations are sometimes unsettling to experience, replicating extreme emotions or physically constricting the movement of people inside them. His work challenges present-day ideologies and social behaviors such as capitalism and consumerism. Büchel is also interested in the lives of the less privileged, choosing to portray their plight in great detail. His 2006/07 London-based project titled ‘Simply Botiful’ was a large-scale construction of an immigrant workers’ community in a disused East End building. It featured an over-crowded hostel, junkyard and tunnel leading to an illegal excavation site where the tusks of a mammoth were just visible.

An expert at manipulating the senses, Pipilotti Rist mesmerizes viewers with her kaleidoscopic use of film, music, performance, installation and sculpture. Dream-like experiences are created through movement, sound bites and colorful psychedelic patterns. Simultaneously fun and serious, her works have feminist undertones, often grappling with issues concerning gender, sexuality and the human mind or body. Amongst peaceful images of flowers, water and the sky, the nude human body is exposed as part of nature. Beauty is celebrated more than absurdity with sculptures such as a chandelier made from underwear. In the past, Rist’s creations have been seen on a large-scale, across screens in New York’s Times Square, or projected onto the ceiling of the San Stae Church in Venice.

From rainbow-colored neon signs to 20-foot rock figures, Ugo Rondinone works in a wide range of media. Since 2007, his work was limited to natural colors stemming from the earthy or metallic materials used. Of particular note were his series of nine stone giants titled Human Nature, which stood along the length of New York’s Rockefeller Plaza in 2013. Made from roughly cut blocks of bluestone stacked on top of each other, they exerted a beguiling primeval power over passers-by. Recently Rondinone has returned to a more colorful palette with his exhibition at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum. Here clowns patrol in bright costumes alongside vibrant circle and horizon wall paintings that mesmerize viewers, creating a trademark Rondinone fantasy world.

Often associated with Neo-Dada, Urs Fischer has developed an international reputation for his playful sculptures and installations. His trademark large-scale pieces include a Swiss chalet made from bread and a series of three brightly colored 20-tonne bears. Not afraid of causing a stir, in 2007 Fischer dug an eight-foot deep hole in the ground of Gavin Brown’s Manhattan gallery and called the work You. The deliberately inane titles of his work express feelings about the absurdity of the world around him. Fischer sometimes uses perishable materials, such as soft wax that has symbolically melted away to show the passing of time. This destructive element of his work demonstrates Fischer’s preoccupation with the mysteries of life and death.

Drawing is the main medium for Marc Bauer’s works, which present historical figures, personal memories and invented characters in a narrative style. Working mostly in black and white his works can have a somber atmosphere or a darkly harrowing feeling. Bauer also repeatedly rubs away the graphite or lithographic chalk with an eraser, creating a smeared effect that mirrors the blurry nature of memories. Sometimes he includes text, historical photographs and cinema stills, which provoke the subconscious of viewers, influencing the narrative they create for themselves. Bauer’s large-scale 2014 charcoal wall drawing for the Museum Folkwang in Essen draws visitors into a story based on the seizure of artworks from the Folkwang collection during the Nazi period.