Delphine Reist

Throughout her practice, Delphine Reist transforms ordinary objects familiar to us from everyday life into the protagonists of multi-layered narratives. The artist questions our relationship to utilitarian objects such as tools, furniture, or hygiene articles by staging them in an unaffected yet artful manner. Usefulness and functionality are confronted with form and aesthetics in order to uncover the essence of things or rather their fetish character. By making herself as invisible as possible and creating a space that encourages associative perception, the artist says a lot about Western society and ultimately also about us as interpretive viewers.

In the context of the current edition, Delphine Reist has explored how she can translate her three-dimensional installations and ready-mades into two-dimensional works on paper. For the first time, she has worked with photograms and conceived a series of 15 large-scale unique pieces for Edition VFO. The imposing silhouettes show the outlines of snow chains, which Reist has laid out on the light-sensitive paper. To the triviality of this object the artist counterposes an elegant, sophisticated aesthetic. She deliberately plays with the polysemy of her images: depending on our individual visual references, they may remind us of different objects such as a basketball hoop, jewelry or a dream catcher. With the work "NEIGE" Delphine Reist invites us to look beyond the mere utility of everyday objects and to let the evocative power of their materiality enchant us.

Delphine Reist was awarded the Swiss Art Award in 2008. She shows at FRAC Grand Large - Hauts-de-France, Dunkerque from 11.6 -31.12.2022 and has had other institutional solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel (2017) and MAMCO, Geneva (2013). Her works are represented in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the FRAC Rhône-Alpes, the FRAC Grand Large, the Musée d’art du Valais in Sion and Kunstmuseum Solothurn, among others. VH