Christiane Lenz

Christiane Lenz, born 1955 in Bern.

Exhibitions and projects (detailed)

For most of the exhibitions and projects of the last five years, you can find more details and images on the corresponding pages.

Further exhibitions and projects (list)

Installations
Stadtkirche Biel, Heiliggeistkirche Bern, Bern Minster, Kunsthaus Langenthal

Installations for performances with music and dance
Since 1996, with among others Uschi Janowsky, Silvia Gwerder, Kjell Keller, Reto Weber, Hans Koch, Paul Giger, Pudi Lehmann, Daniel Glaus, Katharina Weber.

Solo exhibitions

2018 Une saison au nord, les ateliers du nord, Sion
2016 Intervention im Spritzenhaus, Nidau
2015 artundweise Kunst und Denkraum, Bern
2014 Au Joli Mois de Mai
2014 Galerie 9a, Bern
2013 Au Joli Mois de Mai
2013 visarte Biel annual exhibition
2012 Arbeitskreis für Zeitfragen, Biel
2012 Au Joli Mois de Mai
2012 visarte Biel annual exhibition
2011 Voirie, Biel
2002 Galerie alte Krone, Biel
1998 Galerie Kurt Schürer, Biel
1991 Galerie GSMBK, Bern

Group exhibitions (selection)

2022 Joli Mois de Mai, La Voirie, Biel. With Johanna Frautschi.
2021 Galerie ART-ETAGE, Biel. With Anna Neurohr and Florence Plojoux.
2021 Joli Mois de Mai, Glashaus, Biel. With Johanna Frautschi.
2019 Cantonale Bern-Jura, La Nef, Le Noirmont. Avalanche. Installation with J.R. & I.M.
2019 11 in Lyss-Aarberg. Kulturmühle Lyss and Rathauskeller Aarberg.
2019 Joli Mois de Mai, La Voirie, Biel: Avalanche.
2019 Joli Mois de Mai, La Voirie, Biel: Sciaredo, with Anke Zürn.
2018 Easter project at Stadtkirche Biel.
2018 Joli Mois de Mai, project "Zeigs Mal", co-curated with Anke Zürn.
2017 Joli Mois de Mai, with Jocelyne Rickli.
2017 Schlosskeller Fraubrunnen. With Lisa Schaeublin and Marie-Claire Ackermann.
2016 Joli Mois de Mai, with Lisa Schaeublin.
2015 Ex Voto – saving the world. Visarte Basel.
2013 Easter exhibition at Stadtkirche Biel: "Vom Boden aus".
2015 Easter project at Stadtkirche Biel.
2011 Christmas exhibition Cantonale Berne-Jura, Centre Pasquart, Biel.
2001 Hochwasser, Kunsthaus Langenthal.
2002 Christmas exhibition, Centre PasquArt, Biel.
2000 Triennial of Textile Art, Max Berk Museum, Heidelberg, Ulm, St. Gallen.
2000 Im Wind, Kunsthaus Langenthal.
1999 Christmas exhibition of the Kunstverein, Biel.
1996 Arbeitsstelle Kirche im Dialog, Bern.
1995 Galerie filambule, petits dialogues, Lausanne.
1994 International Crafts Fair, special exhibition.
1994 Gestaltendes Handwerk, Munich.
1993 Galerie del Mese/Fischer, European Patchwork/Quilts, Meisterschwanden.
1992 Galerie Greuterhof, Islikon.
1990 6th Biennial of Textile Art, Krefeld, Mulhouse, Bern.
1989 2e exposition nationale de patchwork contemporain suisse, Neuchâtel.
1986 Textil' 86, exhibition of the Canton of Bern, Kornhaus Bern.

Artistic training and continuing education

Drawing with Ueli Schwarz
Various courses at the Schule für Gestaltung Zürich
BFF, Bern
Internship with paper-maker Daniel Oberholzer
Self-directed learning, experimentation and practice
Member of visarte Biel

Public acquisitions

Centre de télécommunication, Neuchâtel
Matthäus parish house, Bern
Retirement and nursing home, Laupen
Arbeitsstelle Kirche im Dialog, Bern
City of Biel art commission

Personal

I have lived in Biel for 30 years, am married, and have three adult children. My part-time work as a nurse complements my income and confronts me, again and again in very concrete ways, with the realities of other people's lives — with pain and impermanence.

A rebellious streak keeps taking me on detours — often very interesting ones. My artistic training is therefore a patchwork-in-progress.

Drawing with Ueli Schwarz, courses at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich, at the BFF in Bern, an internship with a paper-maker, plus continual attentive looking and learning: in exhibitions, in nature, in everyday life.

And of course constant personal experimentation and practice.

From the beginning, second-hand materials and waste products from nature or daily life have played a central role. Materials that already carry a story within them: used fabrics, waste paper, earth, leaves, scrap.

My themes are recurring: processes of growth and decay, history and my/our movements within it. The inconspicuous, the everyday, and what lies behind it, beneath it.

These interests have shaped my techniques. I translated the dialogue with my own history into large, hand-sewn quilts. Later, my approach to fabrics grew freer. The physical closeness of woven cloth to human skin — and thus to "women's domains" such as nursing, child- and elder-care, washing, mending and so on — preoccupied me. Then paper came, in many different aspects. The realisation that paper works enjoy much more recognition in the art world also opened up exciting questions, which led me on to earth and fallen wood. Then also to collaborations with dancers and musicians. After 2004 I fell into a kind of life and creative crisis, in which the art world but also the wealth of materials in my studio became paralysing. I again took detours, in the form of very long walks (for example from Biel to the Atlantic) and a training in kinesiology. Activities in which I use almost no materials, really only my own strengths. — A great liberation.

This restriction led me to exciting discoveries and finally to renewed creative energy. With strongly reduced means — only pencil (graphite or colour) and paper — I examine the ground beneath my feet. On one hand very close: the small patch of ground on which I stand, the cracks, the stains; on the other hand, culture, society and history are also a kind of ground, and there too everything is in motion.

How is my perception influenced by the tempo, the rhythm of my movement? What is slow, what is fast? Who judges? Why do we so often submit to this judgement? I increasingly understand how much subversive power lies in slowness, in refusing speed as the measure of all things. Slowness allows me to see the small parts of which the large is composed.

After many drawings, the installation "GRANA" emerged during this period, shown in 2013 at Stadtkirche Biel as part of the Easter week "Vom Boden aus".

At the moment, I am looking upward. A new series of drawings is taking shape under the working title "Above my head". Here too I try to start entirely from my own position, and from there to sound out relationships, kinships and conflicts with the living other.