Didier Rittener
Landis & Gyr Stiftung Residency
2013
Didier Rittener designs his transfers, prints, sculptures and murals based on an archive of pencil drawings on A4 tracing paper. The drawings depict faces, animals, ornamental motifs, various patterns and words. The first such drawing dates from 2001, while the archive itself was published in 2004 and 2010 with the title Libre de droits (Out of Copyright), defining the parameters of Rittener’s artistic undertaking. His iconographic repertoire, which he is still developing, is heir to medieval books of motifs used by apprentice copyists for practice and to establish norms for figurative representation by means of examples. Rittener foregrounds the fact that such collections belonged to all and were designed for constant reuse. - Laurence Schmidlin, curator of contemporary art, MCBA Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne
Didier has exhibited regularly since 1993, notably Musée Jenisch Vevey, Villa dei Cedri Bellinzona, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Villa du Parc Annemasse, Centre d’art contemporain de l’Onde Vélizy-Villacoublay, Mamco Genève, Printemps de Septembre Toulouse, Musée Pully, Attitudes Genève, Le Crédac Ivry-sur-Seine, Neue Kunst Halle St. Gallen, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-arts Lausanne, Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau, Kunsthaus Zürich, Un Nouveau Festival Centre Pompidou Paris. He is the winner of, among others, the Swiss art awards, the Drawing Now prize in Paris in 2013, the prize Mobilière in 2004. He has done residencies at the Cité international des arts and the Récollets in Paris, and at the Villa Arson in Nice. Didier is a founding member of the contemporary art association Circuit in Lausanne since 1998. He has been a teacher at the HEAD - Geneva since 2004. He has been an expert for creation aid at Pro Helvetia from 2016 to 2019.
Landis & Gyr Stiftung, Switzerland
The Landis & Gyr foundation awards studio scholarships to Swiss artists and cultural professionals in London, Budapest, Sofia and Zug. Its London-based residency partnership with Acme was established in 1987, and provides six month long work/live opportunities for ten Swiss artists per year. Artists are selected for the programme directly by Landis & Gyr Stiftung and must demonstrate a track record of achievement in their field. Over two hundred visual artists, curators, writers, musicians and composers have benefitted from the programme. Residencies are based in Stepney, E1 and are available to Swiss residents only
For more information visit lg-stiftung.ch.
