Bellelay

In the summer of 2021, the Swiss multimedia artist Christoph Rütimann exhibited at the Bellelay Abbey. His artistic language employs a variety of strategies that are strongly influenced by his interest in scientific processes. The works evade clear genre classification: be it installation, video, sound, performance, text or painting, the artist often integrates them into the exhibition site and questions its conventions and norms. In doing so, Rütimann explores the intersection between objective description and subjective experience; his work generates friction by offering new perspectives on the familiar.
Certain elements reoccur throughout Rütimann’s oeuvre. The artist also employs them here in the Abbey in an exhibition titled Bellelay. They operate as a stylistic device to trigger various lines of enquiry and create parallels with the exhibition space by means of form and materiality. What they all have in common is the use of "impoverished" materials, which make reference to the structural fabric of the Abbey. Each work probes these creative means, enabling site visitors to the site to experience the space in a new way.