Intro
Tom Burr+Walter Pfeiffer
Swiss Institute, New York
12 November 2007–19 January 2008
Content
This exhibition, pairing the work of Swiss photographer Walter Pfeiffer with American conceptual artist Tom Burr, was an experiment in international conceptual and visual dialogues. The show intermingled Pfeiffer’s starkly lit, irreverent photographs with Tom Burr’s Storage Project—originally installed in an uninhabited unit of a French Le Corbusier apartment building—which translates images of other building tenants’ balconies used as storage for their belongings to sculptural storage overflow. The resulting exhibition was a domestic scene informed by Burr’s installation, invoking further subjective dimensions in Pfeiffer’s images of family snapshots, party scenes, portraits, and still lifes.
Imbuing the Swiss Institute with the discursive possibilities of two different yet equally groundbreaking artists, the show manifested the exhibition space’s collaborative, discursive potential. The exhibition ultimately acted as a breeding ground for unique, uniquely Swiss and American perspectives.
Co-curated by Florence Derieux
