Exhibition : October 1- November 9, 1997

Eric Lanz
1994/97

Born in Bienne in 1962, he studied at the Ecole d'Art Visuel, Geneva, then theStaatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorg.

Produced a video installation for the Saint-Gervais, Geneva showcase, referringto the Video Series (1994). Lanz proposes an intelligent questioning of the relationshipthat man maintains with the world.

These dialogues between hands confront the most varied functions of gesture (practical,haptical, graphical, symbolic, mechanical,...) in the abstract space of the sameimage.

"Eric Lanz uses video to speak of techniques subsequent to video, thatis, the computer, interactivity, virtual reality, etc... going back to cultural productswell before the electronic image : tools, gestures, clothes. Video takes a mediatingposition - it is still a medium of the real world, to the extent that it recordsimages by means of a camera, but these images already belong to the electronic fieldof fiction which is increasingly taking shape as a world in parallel with our analogicaldaily life (...) Eric Lanz shows us the world of digital simulation like an unadornedpuppet show".
Dieter Daniels

"Eric Lanz's work forces upon us the idea of an effective relation betweenvideo and the long series of tools that men have invented to control the world, towatch over it and/or to manipulate it (...). In the beginning was the hand, the originand model of all man's material and mental tools. From it proceed all the verbs andadjectives which speak of mastery both physical and intellectual".
Laurent Ackert

Catalogue Centre d'Art Contemporain, Fribourg