Christian
Lauchenauer

Born and raised in Eastern Switzerland, and having made north-western Switzerland my home since studying industrial design, I, Christian Lauchenauer, now live and work in Basel. My years of study opened up the world of design to me, during which I engaged intensively with the question of interaction between people and objects. Gradually, my creative focus has shifted: The exploration of the interaction between objects and their significance has replaced design questions centred on function and consumption.

A key component of my artistic process is the mechanisms or systems of the human psyche and society. Literally,

I construct moving, repetitive mechanisms that convey the content in harmony with the aesthetic concept. Technical mechanisms in machines or simple sequences of movement often serve as inspiration. In doing so, I investigate how the interacting forces within a system are mutually dependent and balance one another out. The resulting equilibrium often characterises the simultaneous imbalance. As human beings are inextricably linked to their environment, I seek to draw conclusions from this and to overcome the duality that often suppresses the attainment of higher insight.

In doing so, I rely, amongst other things, on the device of repetition, which – much like a mantra – can intuitively evoke new perspectives in the viewer.

The creative process is constantly caught in the tension between control and chance. During the artistic process, numerous experiments give rise to chance objects and sketches which serve as the starting point for new sculptures. This tension provokes a kind of interplay, in which one can never bring enough under control nor experiment enough. A key criterion here is the conviction of the Japanese artist Shih-t’ao regarding the ‘non-methodical’: ‘The perfect person has no method. Or rather, he follows that best of all methods, which consists in being non-methodical.’