Pavel Büchler
∗1952, Czechoslovakia
lives and works in Manchester, United Kingdom
Pavel Büchler (*1952, Czechoslovakia) Pavel Büchler is known for his pioneering conceptual work with language, obsolete technology and the moving image, as well as his long career as an influential teacher and writer. Focusing on subverting the codes of everyday life or deconstructing iconic texts from the history of literature and science, Büchler’s multimedia practice incorporates performance, photography, installation, writing and books. Sound – often appropriated and reworked – belongs to his favourite means of artistic expression.A sense of transience and nostalgia is evoked in the sound installation Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (2013). The two channel sound installation broadcasts a fragment from Galileo Galilei “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” (1632), a treatise on the old Ptolemaic versus the new Copernican system, in which Galilei, as the founding father of the modern natural sciences, no long longer defines Earth, but the Sun as the central body in our planetary system. The artist is concerned with the representational systems, both communicative and epistemological, as the protagonists in a selected fragment tellingly speak about their doubts and their fears of loss of orientation in view of the radical issues in question. This dialogue he translates into the coded communication tool of Morse code, supplementing it with the sounds of the fog horns of Cape Arago and Vancouver.
Another work in public space is the neon writing “Open”, an adaptation of the historical inscription “Pension” on the façade of the Hotel Ladinia, the historical inn at the heart of St. Ulrich/Ortisei that shut its doors years ago and was reopened just for the duration of the Biennale Gherdëina to serve as an exhibition venue. Through the simple shifting of individual letters of the original inscription the word “Pension” turned into “Open” and thus, also in times of a pandemic and their restrictions, or because of them, became a subtly positioned, yet central symbol of this biennial.
The text installation “Problem gelöst” (2016) consists of a series of framed prints bearing the inscription “Mögen andere kommen und es besser machen” (May others come and do it better). Once again, the artist intervenes in a subtly ironic manner in order to subvert and to question our daily routine and habits. Working with texts that reflect everyday life and its experience in art is an essential aspect of Büchler’s practice. According to Pavel Büchler, art changes the world and our perception, not by producing works, but by interacting in the world.
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