Switzerland

Fabian
Marti

Biography

Fabian Marti was born in Fribourg in 1979. He completed his studies at the Hochschule der Künste and the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles. In 2011, he was featured at the Venice Biennale with a monumental installation, The Summit of It. In 2013, he exhibited at the PasquArt centre in Biel/Bienne in a show titled Marti Collection, including his TwoHotelProject, inspired by Alighiero Boetti, as well as works he had received in exchange from other artists.

In 2014, Marti designed the architecture for the major exhibition The Crime Was Almost Perfect at the Witte de With Contemporary Art Center in Rotterdam. Other recent shows include the Centre de la Photographie in Geneva and the Rietberg Museum in Zurich and the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne. Fabian Marti lives and works between Los Angeles and Zurich.

About the artworks

The works of Fabian Marti oscillate between geometrical forms and references to the vanity of the world. In his art, tapestry cohabits with installation and photographs. Ceramics, an ancestral technique that the artist has been using for several years now, goes to make vases, many of which evoke perpetual motion by means of spiral forms while harking back to the archaic use of clay, a basic and primitive raw material. His obsessional forms evoke hypnosis and optical effects while also bringing to mind discs containing secret, magic music. The artist continues to make the photograms with which he first came to attention. Working with large-format images on photosensitive paper printed randomly in the dark room using images from his extensive visual repertoire, Marti reprocesses his forms on a computer using transparent paper, resulting in imposing, highly aesthetic works of art.

Marti’s diverse cultural influences and inspirations include pre-modern art, African masks and American superheroes, to name but a few. He also strives to connect with nature, aiming to communicate with its essence via ephemeral constructions for the use of other artists : TwoHotelProject, a wooden structure built on the beach at Bahia in Brazil, references the One Hotel created by Alighiero Boetti in Kabul in the 1970s.

A simple, minimally structured space, it can serve as a living and working space for two artists. Marti is also interested in natural substances that can be used to explore the unconscious and lead to loss of control, like the magic mushrooms that he photographs glowing mysteriously amidst the surrounding darkness. Such natural forms, a feature of the shamanic rituals that fascinate this artist, appear recurrently in his work.

Using his materials to create imposing structures, Marti sometimes fills exhibition spaces with his complicated constructions, subverting the traditional mode of hanging works on walls and inviting visitors to enter his singular artistic world.