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Birdwatching, 2003
Installation volière double cage (bleu et rouge) avec 50 canaris - 9m x 6m x 3m - Collection MAMCO - Exhibition view, Les Abattoirs, 2006
© Printemps de septembre, photo André Morin
Born in 1955 in Mörschwill (Switzerland), he lives in Saint-Gallen (Switzerland).
In his drawings, videos, photographs, textual games and installations, Alex Hanimann turns art into an experimental arena. His research into issues of perception and classification have led him to an interest in the nature-culture dichotomy, as illustrated, in particular, in the symptomatic relationship that is struck up between people and animals. “Birdwatching is an introspective act”, he says of his installation
Birdwatching.
This double birdcage with its two-tone walls, created for the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva, has been reconstructed in the main hall at les Abattoirs – Musée Frac Occitanie Toulouse. Some 50 multicoloured canaries are placed in the cages, moving from one colourful background to the next, like a living painting. Between the two cages, a cramped observation post, covered with wire mesh, enables visitors to become involved in their own scientific and aesthetic analyses, and allow themselves to be moved by a spectacle where nature is as present as artifice, and where art acts literally like an optical trap.