Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger
By Steve Peralta
Gerda Steiner's and Jörg Lenzlinger's work deals with an adaptation of nature through synthesis. The Swiss artists' currency is a Hegelian dialectic that gets an empirical flip sideways with the use of objects such as taxidermied animals and insects, glistening ponds of motor oil, dead trees and plants, and flowing streams of chemicals. Their work deals frankly with the unity of opposites such as life and death, good and evil, and hope and despair. It's an existential see-saw ride that lends beauty to almost anything. - Steve Peralta
Gerda Steiner (top) and Jörg Lenzlinger
Hometown: Uster, Switzerland
Age and Occupation: Born 1964 and 1967. Both artists.
Where do you live now?: In Uster, Switzerland.
Describe your work past, present and future in 50 words or less: It was white. Then it became red. That’s why it is pink now.
What would you be doing if you weren’t an artist?: We would be two crocodiles in a shallow river.
What do you love about being an artist?: That we can be crocodiles if we like.
What do you hate about being an artist?: There is no hate.
Favorite Web sites: Google.com
Favorite restaurants: Korean food and forest cooking.
What are you currently reading?: “Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge” by Jeremy Narby
Favorite way to travel: By cargo ship.
Favorite place to hang out: Where the ant hills are and in the kitchens of friends.
“Indoor plants and pig food”
STAMPA Gallery
Basel, Switzerland (2005)
You can tell someone is Swiss when… “La Suisse n’existe pas.” - Ben Vautier
Uster would be so much better if only… ...more wild pigs would run around.
Favorite writer: The ones who write for Lettre International.
Favorite music group: Frogs in a pond.
You have three hours and 24 Swiss Francs ($20 US) to kill in Uster. What do you do?: Recently we found 20 bucks on the street. The same day we had the chimney sweeper in our house (he brings luck). So we went to play the lottery with the 20 found bucks and we won 100 bucks. That’s the story.
Question you’d ask if you were doing this interview: When is the last time you lost your head?
Visit Gerda Steiner’s and Jörg Lenzlinger’s Web site at http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/.
- Photos courtesy of artist.
NeoAztlan editor and founder Steve Peralta is a native of Colorado and graduate of the University of Colorado at Denver. He has been creating content for Web, print and radio for nearly 15 years. Past projects include work with the former Sony Interactive, several Internet boom content providers, and Capitol Underground pirate radio, among others. Peralta can be reached at speralta@neoaztlan.com.
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