Lori Hersberger

Lori Hersberger, born 1964 in Basel, lives and works in Zurich. He studied Video Art and Sculpture at the Basel School of Art and Design.

At the beginning of the nineties he started creating environments and installations, initially combined with video, later with different kinds of media like mirror glass, painting with fluorescent paint, neon light, and chrome steel.

He quickly devoted himself to a wide spectrum of different, seemingly incompatible media and subject matter. In different installations, as well as in his painting and sculptures, he takes up a range of topics such as hybrid emotionalism and the twofold semantic nature of phenomena such as the phantom-like. Calling him an installation artist is just as inadequate as categorizing him solely as a painter, for since the beginning of his career he has dedicated himself to a kind of perspectivism expressed in the experimental exploration of multiple genres.

Lori Hersberger’s art stresses the opposition between the world of illusion and that of reality, yet at the same time alludes to the space between them. In this sense, his works are both sublime and grotesque.

The artwork UNTITLED from 2006 is a mirror glass set in different sizes (total size of 2,90 x 5,20 m). Each single part of the mirrors will function like a kaleidoscope since they are mounted in different angles and sizes. For this reason they will reflect the ceiling with the colorful fresco, the marble ground, sidewalls, from the opposite side the marble relief of the integrated chapel in the church. The artwork will combine all surrounding architectural perspectives in one work.