Mirjam Fischer

Swiss artist Maria Ceppi’s broad repertoire ranges from small-size works to monumental installations and sculptures, from site-specific to participatory projects. The theme of her works often revolves around the tension between naturalness and artificiality. Born in 1963, Ceppi completed her education at art schools in Switzerland and Paris as well as during a studio residency in Philadelphia. Throughout her career, she has been inspired by everyday life. For her works, she uses a wide variety of materials, such as soap, bronze, aluminum and other metals, plastic, or natural products, as well as countless found objects and components gathered from households, trade, and industry. Ceppi’s small objets cultes form a common thread running through her entire oeuvre of more than three decades. Found objects are stripped of their functional and meaningful context and transformed into new works with an autonomous sculptural presence in astonishing combinations and constellations. Especially in her recent monumental Hybrid Shapes, that transformation and merging come to unprecedented effect. This first-ever monograph on Maria Ceppi brings together her multi-layered and heterogeneous oeuvre and offers an insight into the artist’s exploratory and experimental method. Text in English, German and French.

For some forty years, Susi and Ueli Berger's work has been guided by the credo that 'only a new idea justifies a new piece of furniture'. Contrasts between product design and object art, and suitability for everyday use characterise their designs. A playful provocativeness and the combination of rationality and sensuality are additional hallmarks of the Bergers. In 2010, they were awarded Switzerland's most prestigious national design prize, the Grand Prix Design for their joint lifetime achievements at the interface of art, architecture, and design. Susi Berger-Wyss, born 1938 in Lucerne, trained as a graphic designer and worked with an advertising agency in Berne before she met and married Ueli Berger in 1962. Apart from their close collaboration in furniture and interior design, Susi continued to work as a freelance graphic designer and also collaborated with architects, developing colour and material concepts for interiors. Ueli Berger, born 1937 in Berne, trained as a painter and decorator and also attended classes at the city's school of art and design. 1959-61, he completed his artistic education during extended stays in Paris and Copenhagen and worked with renowned Swiss interior designer Hans Eichenberger. Until his passing in 2008, Ueli worked as an artist - creating a much recognised oeuvre in painting, drawing, and sculpture - and designer, and also held a number of teaching appointments at universities and art schools in Switzerland. Featuring a wealth of previously unpublished original drawings, plans, photographs, and promotion materials, as well as a catalogue raisonné of Susi and Ueli Berger's collaborative work and an illustrated biography, this groundbreaking book offers the first-ever survey of their life and oeuvre. It is published in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition at Zurich's Museum für Gestaltung in summer 2018. Text in English and German.