Michael Günzburger

mit Chimären Drucken - vom Freilassen der Erwartungen

Abschluss des PhD-Programms / End of the PhD-Program: November 2023

Betreuung / Supervision: 
Florian Dombois (ZHdK)

This PhD-proposal is about Chimera. It's about the moment you have to let things stand, as they are, and move on. If you try to be too precise, it will dissolve. If you consider Chimera as a mode of working, imagine it like drops of liquid mercury: it presents a mirroring and shimmering image on its surface, but that image fragments and disperses as soon as you reach to touch it. Sometimes you can catch it, but you have to be moving with it. Chimera stands for things being convincingly melded, though realistically not belonging together. The Chimera, which comes from Greek mythology, is an animal-blend of a goat, a lion and a snake. It is one of these unreal, but yet undeniable creatures that have existed in almost every culture over the course of history.The project is built on three pillars: sharing, challenging and advancing the field. The forms of «sharing» are mostly to be found in collaborative production practices and working on the forms of presentation. «Challenging» the use of the rambling model of the Chimera in many, many fields, and «advancing the discipline», by trying to discover what kind of Chimeras might suggest themselves in the current times, considering its astonishing relevance to common methods of making art. The project all begins with montages of life-size prints of humans with prints of other animals.

Kurz-Biographie / Short Bio 
Michael Günzburger’s work is based on drawings but he insists this should be understood only by also acknowledging his curiosity and experience of collaboration based on other craft practices. Michael has worked with experienced researchers and craftsmen in many fields: from miniature painters to virologists, master-printers and ethnicians. He followed an autodidactic artistic career until 2013 when he earned an MFA and became a research fellow at the Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR) and the Forschungsschwerpunkt Transdisizplinarität at the University of the Arts in Zürich (CH). He has been awarded numerous private and public residencies and grants. His works have been shown in institutions and galleries such as Kunsthaus Zürich (2019) , Human Ressources (L.A. 2017, U.S. of A.), Christinger de Mayo (Zürich, 2015). His artworks are featured in both private and public collections including the Swiss National Library. He produces a steady stream of publications, among these are: «Contact» with Edition Patrick Frey and «Fachstelle» with Edition Taube.

Weblink: 
www.guenz.ch