ABOUT

Sebastian Utzni (b. 1981) is a conceptual artist based in Zurich and Lucerne, Switzerland. The materials he uses are varied and are chosen to serve best the delivery of each project.

His working technique is that of a flâneur, relying on happenstance to throw up new subjects of research and directions of thought. This is a time-based, peripatetic process of collection and absorption. An idea may ripen over many years before it comes into fruition and takes material form. Utzni is interested in the quotidian simultaneity of academic, cultural, economic, historic, political, scientific and societal contexts, filtering and undertaking a detailed analysis of often-ambivalent cultural symbols. In this process he physically tests materials, juxtaposing and making visible connections and existing structures that may gone unnoticed. This leads to unexpected, often contradictory combinations of materials and subjects placed within a contemporary context.

The recipient plays an important part in Utzni's work. Not only is he interested in testing the recipient's reaction, but the recipient is needed to activate the work and complete it. After the recipient has internalised the concept of the work it may well disappear or dissolve and continue to be active in the recipient's mind.

Sebastian Utzni holds a diploma in Visual Arts from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), 2008 and currently works as Head of BA Fine Arts at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences.