For the tenth time this season, the Federal Office of Culture oversees and organises Switzerland’s contribution to the Cairo International Art Biennale. The Biennale is dedicated to contemporary art and is seen as one of the most important cultural events of the Middle East.

In choosing Luca Frei, the Federal Art Commission has recommended an artist who has lived in Sweden for several years and whose works now attract international attention. Nevertheless, his oeuvre has only become more widely known in Switzerland in very recent times, notably following his exhibitions in the Museo Cantonale d’Arte in Lugano and the Swiss Art Awards in Basle. With its decision, the commission expresses its appreciation for Luca Frei's artistic approach, especially the powerful way in which it transforms the spatial and situational context of an exhibition setting into a complex realm of multi-layered meanings.

At the International Cairo Biennale, Luca Frei will exhibit an installation in three parts constituting of a three-dimensional ensemble as well as drawings and text. The installation makes creative use of a corridor of the exhibition building, i.e. a transit situation. In it, a composition is presented to passersby which can be interpreted both in aesthetic and formal terms and as a proposition for narrative expansion. In as much as his works time and again focus on the grey area between art as an autonomous aesthetic activity and art as a collective process, the installation is characteristic of Luca Frei’s handling of spatial conditions and situational circumstances within an exhibition location.

About Luca Frei
Born in Lugano in 1976, Luca Frei studied in Lugano, Edinburgh, Yale and Malmo. He has worked and lived in Malmo, Sweden for the past ten years. In recent years, his oeuvre has been shown in a number of solo exhibitions, including: Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano; Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris; Frascati Theatre, Amsterdam (2010); Swiss Cultural Institute in Milan (2009); Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh; Studio Dabbeni, Lugano und Lunds Konsthall, Lund (2008).

Further information on Luca Frei at:
www.balicehertling.com/lucafreiworks.html
www.studiodabbeni.ch/p_artisti/frei.htm

For press images, go to:
www.bak.admin.ch > Aktuelles > Bildergalerien > Biennalen

Previous participants of the Cairo Art Biennale
Switzerland has in the past been represented in the biennial exhibition by the following artists: Claude Sandoz (1988), Markus Döbeli, Jean-Luc Manz and Carmen Perrin (1992), Peter Roesch (1994), Fabrice Gygi (1996), Heinrich Lüber and Peter Emch (1998), Laurent Goei (2001), Željka Marušić & Andreas Helbling and Lisa Schiess (2003), Hervé Graumann (2006) as well as Christine Hemauer and Roman Keller (2008).

Address for enquiries:

Andreas Münch, Head of the Arts Section, Federal Office of Culture,
Phone +41 (0)76 344 44 35, andreas.muench@bak.admin.ch

Anne Weibel, Communications, Federal Office of Culture,
Phone +41 31 322 79 85, anne.weibel@bak.admin.ch

Publisher:

Federal Office of Cultural Affairs

Internet: http://www.bak.admin.ch